Originally Posted by P_RN
Not gonna happen. The "nursing service line" is of a different budget than the CEOs etc. Also different from the marble lobbies etc.
Remember that your bennies/perks like insurance, etc. make your "pittance of a salary" actually double. That way hiring agency etc at one and a half times your salary is actually cheaper.
We got that song and dance from our VP of nursing at a meeting once. It's very interesting. The problem I had with that info was the way in which it was presented. Supposedly a thing to improve our chances of getting magnet status, and it was supposed to be so nurses could talk to this guy about salary and benefits. He did a lot of talking, fast, and threw this out as if to say we should be grateful for what we get, then was very flustered when a lot of nurses had real questions for him, for which he had no real answers and the corporate BS didn't cut it.
So, I really don't care for the "hey we are doing you a favor" that seems to come from that line of reasoning. Agency nurses aren't allowed to be called off for low census, like the full time employees are. There are times we have to spend our benefits just to get a paycheck; they don't make agency nurses do that.
Not all nurses use all their benefits. As in, insurance. So, you can do the paperwork to try and make me think that I'm getting paid double, but unless I "collect" on that by actually using the insurance for a big-ticket thing like surgery, all I'm doing is paying out a couple hundred bucks a month. My $2400 a year contribution for family insurance is more than I spend a year for prescriptions and doctor's visits. I don't mind paying for insurance, as I've worked since I was a teenager and don't expect things to be handed to me, as a rule. However!
When my hospital says they want yet another expansion as they haven't finished with the one they are on, throws around money left and right, yet sets limits on what their insurance will cover that clearly makes about half the nursing staff upset, I'd say they have some of their priorities skewed, and their idea of how to set up budgets needs some rearranging. What they don't need is to talk down to us and tell us they are actually paying us more, how lucky we are to have a job, please answer nice on your surveys so we can get magnet status!
/rant off. In no way am I intending to crawl up your hiney, P_RN. More of a rant in the general direction of management.
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