[dadof4gs]

Hello. Can any of you help us? We are thinking of moving to the Spokane/Coeur d'Alene area (prefer the Idaho side), but are not sure if salaries are competitive enough to make it possible. The information we have says the average RN makes $22.66 an hour in Idaho. Is this the same for CCRNs? That wage seems awfully low...

[lindarn]

Originally Posted by richrodgersccrn

Hello. Can any of you help us? We are thinking of moving to the Spokane/Coeur d'Alene area (prefer the Idaho side), but are not sure if salaries are competitive enough to make it possible. The information we have says the average RN makes $22.66 an hour in Idaho. Is this the same for CCRNs? That wage seems awfully low...

Wages in Spokane are based on the wages in North Idaho, which are VERY LOW. Idaho is a "right to work" state, VERY anti-union, and it is reflected in the rates of pay and benfits. Spokane wages are a little better because many hospitals are unionized. That is why many nurses in North Idaho commute to Spokane work to work.

However, I said a little better. The pay in Eastern Washington for nurses, and most other jobs is low. Spokane is a service industry, minimum wage economy, and the pay here has historically been SIGNIFICANTLY lower than other part of Washington. There is high unemployment here as well, do the closing of factories, lumber mills, etc. Many nurses are the sole source of income, and health benefits here. They are just not willing to rock the boat. While the cost of living is less than Seattle, we pay higher prices for gas, get less for our money in State taxes, the rest of the cost is not low enough to justify the low pay.

I was recently offered a job with an out-patient dialysis company. They advertised for nurses with critical care background, so many years of nursing experience, but when it came to pay, all they offered my was $23 an hour, and that was with me foregoing benfits, because I am covered under my husbands plan. With benefits, the pay was $21 an hour. Don't spend it all in one place.

Now, Washington has no state income tax, which Idaho does. You might try the Tri Cities area of Washington. This is the Central, Southern area. The Tri Cities are Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco. Yakima is also there. It is an up and coming area, with a low cost of living, and they are looking for nurses for their increasing population. They have added many improvements to the hospitals, they opened a Heart Institute, etc. Some of the hospitals are offering REALLY GOOD BENEFITS. Like double contributions to your retirement fund, low cost health care premiums, extra pay for things like BSN, and CCRN, $$ for college to get you BSN, which are non existent in Spokane, and North Idaho.

Also, in Spokane, there is three schools of nursing, one right over the border (20 miles away), and schools in Tricities, and Southern Idaho, and in Seattle. THERE IS NO NURSING SHORTAGE IN IDAHO AND EASTERN WASHINGTON. The nurses are very weak, and wishy washy. They will not stand up against the hospitals, and the State Nurses Association here is, as we say in Brooklyn, about as useful as tits on a bull. They do nothing, get nothing for the nurses, and are beholden to the administration.

Now Deaconness recently unionized with 1199, and the jury is still out on how well they are doing there. One of nurses who I know, said that in their first contract they did away with alot of things that the nurses already had, and it was not a good contract. I am not impressed. It seems that they are following in the footsteps of WSNA.

Anyway, PM me if you want. Good luck.

Lindarn, RN, BSN, CCRN
Spokane, Washington

[amariaj]

All three hospitals in the CDA area pay based on years of experience- I think starting at about $20-21/hr for new grads. RNs with > 15 years of experience should be getting I would think upwards of $30/hr. Things are getting more competitive in this area although the nursing shortage is nothing like what you hear about in other parts of the country.

[brissie]

Starting wage for a new graduate at Kootenai Medical Center in Coeur d'Alene is just over $23/hr. It is pretty similar, though a little bit more at Sacred Heart Medical Center and Deaconess Medical Center both in Spokane. The nursing shortage had definetly hit the inland northwest. If you check the Kootenai Med Center website www.kmc.org and the Sacred Heart website www.shmc.org you will see that both hospitals have over 50 open RN positions each. I worked at KMC until recently and staffing is a hugh issue at the hospital. Nurses are having to take 6 or 7 patients on the med-surg units at night, the charge nurse included, simply because there are not enough nurses to work. KMC has recently begun to expand its open heart program, doing as many as 2 CABGs a day with only around 6 nurses in the entire ICU qualified to care for them, so if you are post open heart trained they would snap you up in a heart beat. The critical care units at the three major hospitals have been pretty much full for a while now with lots of diversions going on between hospitals when they get full.