Salary and work-life balance are the top incentives that nurse practitioners and physician assistants consider when looking for a job, according to a new survey.
Most advance practice clinicians, 46 percent, strongly prefer to work in a private practice rather than as an employee of a hospital or health system, according to the survey by PracticeMatch, a St. Louis-based company that matches healthcare providers with employers
The company surveyed 614 NPs and 456 PAs about their job preferences. The demand for both NPs and PAs is growing rapidly and healthcare employers are competing to hire them at an unprecedented rate, the company said in an announcement about the survey.
“Advanced practice clinicians are quickly realizing their value and leveraging their status as hot candidates in the healthcare market,” the survey found, with one-third of respondents expecting to change jobs within the next 1 to 5 years. Employers need to be prepare to offer competitive salaries and incentives, the company said.
Here are some of the survey results:
- Along with “higher salary” and “better work-life balance”, advance practice clinicians rank “better hours” as their third priority when looking for a job.
- Nearly 16 percent of PAs, and 19 percent of NPs expect to change jobs within one year.
- Forty-three percent said they would not consider relocating for a new job.
- 81 percent of respondents had been contacted by a recruiting firm.
- 87 percent of respondents expect the job search process to take less than six months.
There has been rapid growth in the number of PAs working in the U.S., with the number increasing over 35 percent in the last five years, The number of nurse practitioners has nearly doubled over the past 10 years, according to the American Association of Nurse Practitioners.