I'm a little PO'd

[Todd SPN]

As a soon-to-be LPN, I've just started taking notice of where the jobs are and what the scale is. One local hospital has started something that I feel is detrimental to all (especially new) nurses in the area. Up until 3 mos ago, the hospital was staffed with RNs only. To cut costs they decided to hire LPNs to staff many of L&D positions and offer the RNs positions in other departments or... Now, I find out they are expanding the use of LPNs to other units in the hospital. They are hiring newly licensed nurses from the local college at a whooping $12hr. (RNs $24, CNAs $9). Heck, the drs clinics are hiring new, non licensed yet grads at the same rate. I'm afraid that once these clinics and other health care facilities find out that they are willing to work for those rates, a decline in wages will follow. And I can just imagine how little work the on-call RNs are going to get now. I wouldn't work for $12 hr, but the majority of my classmates would take that wage to work at the hospital. And the teaching staff is walking around patting themselves on the back at this turn of events. It's almost like they were in cahoots. They have much to gain in the way of fighting for state funding for the nursing program if they show how their grads have "infiltrated" the hospital working pool. In the spring the the college is going to start an RN program. This after saying last year they didn't have enough state funding to add extra LPN nursing programs to take care of the people on the waiting lists. I wonder what starting wage will be for the RN grads, $18 hr? I can see this spreading to another three hospitals in my immediate area. Anyone ever been through this?

[Shellsie]

i think that the way things are right now, nurses in general make more money in a nursing home, then md office, then hospital. i always say im in the wrong line of work if i wanna make money....my brother-in-law makes 65,000 a year working at lowes(home improvement store) as an assistant manager......but i didnt go into nursing to make the big bucks

ps--->i think nurses need more money :)