Salary rate for nurse with 10 years critical care experience

dang! you are getting raped.. $21/hr is more like what i see new grads make not 10 yr vets. it may be the culture of your facility. i would certainly find out what other facilities pay nurses with your time and exp. and compare. i have just over 7yrs and pull just a few cents over $30/hr. in north ms.

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_ms.htm#29-0000 says $26.49 is the median hourly for MS, that is going to be greatly affected by tour location and type of facility.

You might try http://www.salary.com/mysalary.asp

I was in the same position last year working at Regional West in Nebraska. I was making $22/hour after 6 years of working there. One of my friends told me about travel nursing and initially I didn't want to do it because I have a family but I agreed to talk to a recruiter anyway. You have to have at least 2 years of floor experience. I found out that travel nurses actually do make a lot more money because they are not taxed on there entire paycheck and I can still live at home and be considered a traveler. I thought this was too good to be true so I asked around and the only stipulation to receive the tax benefits was I had to work just 50 miles away from my permanent address. I was already driving 45 minutes to get to work so another 15 wouldn't kill me, so I tried it. I went from making $740 net/week to $1000 take home per week! That was 4 years ago and since then I've been "traveling" ever since. I have a multi-state license so I'm able to work in the 22 other compact states and I just recently got my California license so I can make some real money. The agency that I use has contracts in literally every state and I almost got to go to Hawaii for a 13 week assignment! Unfortunately, I didn't have the experience they were looking for! I've heard terrible stories about some travel agencies so you have to be careful to pick a nice, honest, reputable recruiter.