If teaching hospital nurses are denied a raise, this may be why

oramar · Feb 24, 2009

Every nurse should keep a copy of this article near by because every once in a while a patient or family tells a nurse that high nurse wages are the cause of expensive medical care. When you hear this just pull this article out and give it to the person that brought it up.

JB2007, ASN, RN · Feb 24, 2009

Every nurse should keep a copy of an article near by because every once in a while a patient or family tells a nurse that high nurse wages are the cause of expensive medical care. When you hear this just pull this article out and give it to the person that brought it up.

If I could choke back the laugher long enough to hand them the artical I would follow your suggestion. I would probably be too busy holding my hand back from giving them a good thump on the back of the head to knock some sense into them. High nurses wages isn't that a hoot! Well I am going back to counting the millions that I made working as a nurse.

HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD · Feb 24, 2009

Wanna get even angrier? :angryfire Medical schools receive massive funding from our tax dollars. The cost of "medical education" is a CMS 'pass through' - which means that hospitals get reimbursed for a lot of their costs to support phycisian education. So -- we are ALL paying these exhorbitant salaries in one way or another. Where do they get off????

Hmmm - I wonder what the highest paid Dean of a Nursing School gets? I'll bet it's not even in the same stratosphere.

**canoehead, BSN, RN** · Feb 24, 2009

I think a good doctor that is also a good teacher is worth their weight in gold. However, it's often the good pencil pushers that rise to the top, and they are worth about $10 per hour, and free pens for home.

llg, PhD, RN · Feb 24, 2009

Yes. I read the Chronicle's artile yesterday and thought, "One more reason for nursing faculty to feel under-appreciated and under-paid." As an adjunct, I make $4000 per course -- and have to supply my own computer, textbook, etc. myself.

llg, PhD, RN

core0 · Feb 25, 2009

This is how major academic research hospitals work. If you look at what he does its pretty easy to see why his pay is the way that it is. He's a Dermatologist and a Dermatopathologist. Pretty much two of the hottest medical specialties right now. He runs the dermatopathology lab. Having a BC dermatopathologist is pretty much a license to print money from the university standpoint. Lots of slides to look at at a pretty decent rate (even if he doesn't do Derm at all anymore).

Then there's the extras. Derm and dermatopathology mean lots of industry money. Reading slides for clinical trials, designing clinical trials etc. Also looking at his CV I wouldn't be suprised if there was some patent money buried in there somewhere. Finally he has some NIH grants. Hard to tell how much, but for research Universities this is like special sauce that makes it better. The T32 grant makes it ever so much more so.

Even without grant money or industry someone like this is probably worth $10-12 million in income to Columbia. With grant money and industry probably a lot more. Someone like this is pretty hard to find. You need someone like him for the residency, the research and the lab.

Not saying that others shouldn't get more, but you have to understand the way Research Universities work to understand why he's getting paid this way. There are probably around 100 jobs (including nursing) that would go away if he isn't there. Thats why hes worth a lot of money to the University.

David Carpenter, PA-C