The Most Lucrative Nurse Practitioner Practice Settings
What are the most lucrative employment settings for NPs? Based on 5,053 responses so far to the 2009 ADVANCE National Salary and Workplace Survey of Nurse Practitioners, the top five highest paying NP practice settings are aesthetics/skin care, emergency department, house calls, surgery and mental health.
Since we last asked in 2007, aesthetics, surgery and mental health settings each record average salary increases greater than $13,000 -- and aesthetics/skin care compensation rose more than $20,000. We didn't ask about house calls last time, so we'll assess compensation growth in that setting with our 2011 survey.
None of these most lucrative settings employs more than 5% of nurse practitioners. Family practice, which employs more than 23% of nurse practitioners, records an average salary increase of about $16,000 since 2007, but the rest of the top five employers of NPs (hospital, internal medicine, women's health and pediatric settings) each show an increase less than $8,000.
While an $8,000 salary boost over 2 years isn't bad, especially in this economy, we can see that a smaller number of nurse practitioners are seeing much bigger increases. (And just for fun: Gerontology settings increased salaries by more than $10,000, while oncology settings gave only about $4,000 in raises.)
Be sure to take the survey and be counted! Survey ends at midnight Sept. 30, and we need at least 1,000 more responses to meet our goal.