NP/ Educator Salaries in CA

It's hard to get consistent salary figures because there are various employment models for NP's -- those who work in private practice with a physician group, those who work for hospitals, and those who work as business owners. In addition, California being a large state has variations in salary by region and the general consensus is that the Northern cities and metro areas have higher salaries. You can use academic medical centers as a point of reference. Some of the University of California campuses (Irvine, LA, Davis, San Francisco, San Diego) have medical schools and affiliated medical centers and their salaries are in the public domain. You can type NP or RN in the salary search and you'll see how much they pay.

I'd consider more than salary. Do you want to be running around on the floor when you're older? Do you want to be considered a labor cost or a revenue generator? The provider status is much more pleasurable IMO.

I had the same dilemma. If I went back to get my WHNP I would probably only make about $5 more an hr than I make now as an BSN RN also in CA. I can't justify a $45k loan for such a small pay raise. I really wanted to further my education so I'm currently in a MSN program with a focus on Public Health -still will open more doors but at 1/2 the price.

Here's a link: http://ucsfhr.ucsf.edu/index.php/staffing/tpp_detail/. NP's at UCSF typically start at either the title Nurse Practitioner II (if union) or Clinical Nurse V (if non-union). I'm not sure where Nurse Educators fall under but I suspect they are either Clinical Nurse IV or maybe even V. The "steps" correspond to the years of total nursing experience. For a nurse practitioner, it is the cumulative years working in nursing from RN level to NP level as opposed to just counting the years of NP experience alone. You advance a step as you gain more years of experience.