Contrasting pay and holidays in US with UK

purplemania, BSN, RN · Dec 29, 2004

You are right. Not enough time off for workers in USA (all workers).The older I get the more important I feel it is to be with family and friends and ENJOY life.

llg, PhD, RN · Dec 29, 2004

If you are happy in England, then stay in England. No one is trying to force you to come here. Like one of the posters above, I think you are just trying to pick a fight.

Personally, I get 35 paid days off per year and make approximately $73,000 USD per year and have a very flexible schedule of Monday through Friday daytime hours.

Some jobs are better than others. There is a wide variety of working hours, duties, and compensation packages. Each person has to find what works best for him or her.

llg

letina · Dec 29, 2004

I am a UK RN.

Give me the USA any day, I for one am counting the days until I get my long-awaited green card

fergus51 · Dec 30, 2004

It depends on where you work. I get three weeks off a year at my current job and that increases with years of service (I just started here, so I'm not sure how much it would be after 10 years). Comparing salaries is silly unless we look at cost of living. I make a lot more than 55K a year without overtime (36 hours a week), but I also live in a pretty expensive state. You'll find it's very difficult to generalize about the whole USA because there is no national system for healthcare so the benefits and pay rates vary widely.

wam79 · Dec 30, 2004

I get 5 weeks vacation plus ten holidays

I make about $58,000 without the OT

Nurse Practitioners make more $ than me

Fun2, BSN, RN · Dec 30, 2004

I'd rather work in a poor country hospital than to live outside the USA!

Thank God I'm American!!! :)

I'm glad you're happy where you are.

ayndim · Dec 30, 2004

It all depends on what you want. I think the money is better in the US. The vacation time is better in the UK. Personally, I love the UK and can't wait to get my RN and go back. Then again because RN pay is soooo dismal there I need to have quite a bit saved for a house and car. And my dh makes great money and his company is worldwide. If all goes as planned I should be back in the UK with 4 or 5 years. With enough money for the bribe (costing me $30,000 from the sale of our house in 4/5 years time to bribe dh.), 150,000 GBP for a downpayment on a house, enough for a car (dh is taking his and it is coming out of the money from the sale of our house), and enough for moving us over (shipping goods, flights, money until first payday, etc). I cannot imagine how we could do it otherwise. The price of houses don't match incomes over there. But I love it there and miss it.

Saying that if I had to stay in the US, I could be quite happy living in Vermont, New York or New Hampshire. And to be honest if it were all about money we would be staying in the US. The wages are much higher here (I have lived and worked in both the US and the UK) and the housing is more affordable. However, healthy food is much cheaper in the UK. At least when I lived there. No wonder America has an obesity problem. Fast food is cheaper than a nutritious homecooked meal. And people give me such looks when I tell them my kids have to drink water, except at mealtimes when they can have milk or juice.

But the UK has its problems too. I am still amazed that nurses there have to work rotating shifts. That will be a biggie. I don't mind nights, as long as it is nights all the time. And I love 12 hour shifts. Get it over with. And there are many great things about America. It seems like US nurses have a broader scope of practice. Not to say that UK nurses are not as good or well trained but that American nurses perhaps get to do more.

So if you love where you are that is all that matters. No place is perfect. Not in pay, benefits, or quality of life.

Larry · Dec 30, 2004

I just work normal houurs 8 - 430/5pm monday to friday with one weekend a month.

My friend on holiday here from Florida says its not worth older nurses working in US, because its too hard to start again.

Thats the bottom line!

Rocknurse, MSN, APRN, NP · Dec 30, 2004

The pay is better in the USA, but the holidays and everything else is better in the UK. I earn $60,000 here as an ICU RN, in England I earned about $30,000. Here i get just 2 weeks vacation but in England I had 4 weeks vacation, plus every month I did a week of 7 nights and then got a week off, so for most of the time I only worked two weeks out of every month. The standard of nursing and the general way things were run I much prefer in the UK, but that's a whole other thread. On the other hand, it was so expensive to live in London, and to travel there, that I never seemed to have enough money. Here I bought a brand new car and gas is cheap, and my rent is a lot less. I do miss England though, and it's not all about money. Remember family and friends and familiarity of your culture. You may be desperate to leave England now but after you've seen how different it is here you will be desperate for the NHS again I guarantee.

letina · Dec 30, 2004

I just work normal houurs 8 - 430/5pm monday to friday with one weekend a month.
My friend on holiday here from Florida says its not worth older nurses working in US, because its too hard to start again.
Thats the bottom line!

Can you expand on the "older" quote?

DutchgirlRN, ASN, RN · Dec 30, 2004

People in UK have free health care.
In USA I hear nurses only get two weeks holiday.

Our health care is not free but you get what you pay for. I have family in the UK and waiting 6 weeks for a root canal or dying before you get your turn to have a CABG doesn't sound like a good deal to me. These things happened to my family members so I'm not making it up. I have more such similar stories.

The same goes true for Holland.

Yes you get alot of paid time off but so do we. It's call PTO. We accure it by working. We are free to take it whenever we choose. We don't have what you would say "so many weeks off or certain days off" because the hospital operates 24/7 Most of us work 3 days per week. Off 4 days per week and accure suffiecient PTO time to allow for vacations and sick days.