By 
Image: © iStockphoto.com
While your work isn’t everything in life, it is the place where you invest the biggest chunk of waking hours. If you want to work at a place that is truly satisfying — with the best salaries, benefits and professional standards — then you’ll want to know what the Hottest Health Employers are for nurses.
NursingLink has created this list of the Hottest Health Employers for Nurses to help you find the best companies to work for, coast to coast, using four different standards to evaluate them.
First, we looked at the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, published Feb. 4, 2008. This list selects the 100 best companies in all industries, based on employee responses to in-depth surveys. Of the 100, 12 employ nurses. Since these are ratings that contain a big chunk of employee input and benefits evaluations, this provides a great baseline on what nurses think of working in these facilities.
We then looked at other key metrics of a good employer — professional excellence. For this, we integrated three other rating systems:
• American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Nursing Magnet facility designation
• U. S. News and World Reports’ Best Hospital ratings (including 16 medical specialties)
• American Hospital Association’s Most Wired Hospitals (the top 100)
The Top 12 are:
2. Ohio Health
3. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
6. Mayo Clinic
7. King’s Daughter Medical Center
8. Southern Ohio Medical Center
9. Arkansas Children’s Hospital
10. Healthways
11. Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network
12. Baptist Health
Central States Win
For the most part, these top employers are located in the central regions of the country, with three exceptions in coastal areas (Mayo Clinic and Baptist Health in Florida and Scripps Health in San Diego).
The Midwest and the South tied for the highest number of winners. In the Midwest, four winners were located in Kentucky, Minnesota, and in Ohio and four winners were located in the South in Arkansas, Florida, and Georgia.
In the West, Arizona and California had winners while Connecticut and Pennsylvania are home to the winners in the Northeast.
A Word About Competition
The good news: get a job at one of these institutions and you’ll enjoy state-of-the-art healthcare for you and your family, tuition reimbursement, onsite gyms, and more perks. At least one facility — Baptist Health of So. Fla. — offers a nursing retention bonus.
The bad news: Getting a job is highly competitive for healthcare jobs. But don’t be dismayed by the overall number of applicants. Nurses are special and are more in-demand than many other hospital employees. Of course, it never hurts to have great recommendations or be at the top of your class.
