A Time For Reflection
At year end, (or year start, depending on your perspective), we like to look over the articles that were the most popular based on our readers comments. I hope you enjoy this recap and that the coming year is the best ever for you and your families.-Conrad

Sponsored by Lloyd Healthcare

Veteran Nurse Tries Travel Nursing

Procrastinating Your Job Search? (5 Custom Solutions)

Now You Can Upgrade Your Nursing Degree Online

This Issues Feature Article – Sponsored by Lloyd Healthcare

How Can Women Earn More?
By Marty Nemko

Women’s organizations have established April 25 as Equal Pay Day: To dramatize what they believe is pay discrimination against women, they say that men could vacation until April 25 and by the end of the year, still earn as much as women do.

Any fair-minded person would decry pay discrimination. I would be especially incensed because I am husband to a working woman and father of a working daughter--discrimination against women would be discrimination against my family.

Alas, as is too often the case with advocacy groups’ assertions, the concept behind Pay Equity Day is misleading.

Dr. Warren Farrell, who served three terms as the only man on the board of the National Organization for Women in New York City and who was selected by the Financial Times as one of the world’s top 100 thought leaders, spent the past 12 years searching through statistics provided by authoritative sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. His findings are summarized in a book, Why Men Earn More. Those findings were presented in a recent editorial in the New York Times and a segment on ABC-TV’s 20-20.

That research revealed that “Women now earn more than men for the same work: jobs that are equally risky, requiring equally difficult-to-acquire skills (for example, high-level math), equally long workweeks, equally frequent travel and relocation, responsibility for the same revenue or numbers of people, plus 16 other measures.”

The book’s message is good news ...................

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I once thought that travel nursing was something I could never do. I suppose there is no rational reason why I had come to that conclusion, but after my family had grown and left the home, I realized I had more time on my hands. Frankly, I was getting bored and wanted to spice things up, become more adventurous. Then one day, a friend pulled me aside and talked to me about travel nursing. Though I had never thought about it before, I knew it was something I should at least consider. Having run the typical rat race and having not achieved some goals I had envisioned, I was quickly drawn to the financial benefits of travel nursing. After all, if the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result each time, $18 an hour was proving truly insane. So with this goal in mind, I made a decision......................

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You’d think job seekers are highly motivated to get employed: Of course, there’s the money. Plus, it feels better to have a good job than to be feeling useless at home or laboring in misery.

Yet job hunters dither. I polled a few colleagues who are career counselors like me, and we estimate that only half of our clients follow through on the job-landing plans we develop. People without the support (and nagging!) of a career counselor probably dawdle even more.

Here are five reasons that job seekers procrastinate--along with solutions:

Inertia. Most of us find it easier to just keep doing what’s right in front of us than to carve out the time to search for a job --especially if you’re tired after a long day. Many people with unpleasant jobs still earn decent pay, have a working spouse, or have money socked away, so there’s no urgency to get re-employed.

Solution: Respect yourself enough to believe you deserve a better job. Then build your job search into your schedule. You wouldn’t blow off a doctor’s appointment that you put into your datebook .....................

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Nurses can now get degrees from a top university and do it all online. These programs are surprisingly affordable and you can work at your own pace. Are you a busy professional that just does not have time to attend classes in person? Are you a TRAVEL NURSE who is on the move but needs to upgrade your credentials? To get information on the following programs just click on the link and fill out the short form. We will make sure the information is provided to you. And good luck! Click here for LPN to RN, here for RN to BSN, and here for Masters Degree Programs

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