Do you think you are adequately compensated in your job as a nurse?

Nurses General Nursing

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  1. Do you think you are adequately compensated in your job as a nurse?

    • 201
      Yes
    • 945
      No

1,146 members have participated

Hi,

I am taking prerequisites to go to nursing school and I was wondering if nurses feel they are adequately compensated for the job they do. Some of the reasons I was drawn to nursing was for the nature of the job, the tasks involved in being a nurse as well as the salary. With different sources stating that nursing is a high demand field and high job satisfaction (US News & World Report and CNNMoney) are nurses paid enough to do the jobs they do? I have read some comments on the forums and from other sources stating that some nurses feel that they are not and I would really like to get a glimpse of what nurses really think. Any feedback would be helpful. Thanks.

I also work at a small rural hospital. The initial pay is okay, but we do not have health insurance, disability, life nor retirement.

I am not a nurse yet, but I find it extremely wrong that you are not getting health insurance and other benefits. :angryfire

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Specializes in Med/surg, L & D, Theatre, A & E.

Its a pity that our remunaration is not standardised and that we get paid according to the employer's wishes, and not necessarily performance, experience or education. If we had a mandtory minimum, it could probably be better. And I wonder, in the better places where medics are compensated for injury, how come its rated according to job group and not extend of injury? Does a needle prick deeper if your job group is higher and v/v?

Another factor that is globally not rewarding is the societal attitude towards nurses. We (nurses) have to stand the malevolence of patients and their relatives yet the health care team is quite large. No one really understands our job hours and especially that our job taxes us both mentally and physically.

All said and done, I particularly get some small time satisfaction like when i get results from my nursing care, and occasionally appreciation (verbal mostly). Oh, and the hope that my real reward is in Heaven!!!

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Specializes in RN- Med/surg.

Yes- I am well compensated, I have good insurance and adequate paid time off.

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Lets talk figures, what do you people make? I make $0 as a student, lol.

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What kind of retirement benefits do you have from your empoyer? Do they include any type of medical retirement benefit????

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Not even close. I am a dual degree BSN with my former in Computer Science and I took a substantial pay cut making this transition. The majority of my friends are union laborers, linemen ~45 hr., plumbers., ~36 hr., HVAC ~26 hr. Here in the Midwest the pay for an RN is much lower than any of those jobs listed above. I think the only method that has worked in obtaining more appropriate wages for nurses is through collective bargaining such as the nurses on the coasts. Its also the quickest way to get fired by talking about it, at least around here.

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>>> I recently read that a mascot for a professional sports team makes on average $60,000 per season. Yep - the person dressed in the dog or pirate outfit, jumping around, doing push-ups. I didn't feel terribly undercompensated ... until I read that! >>>:icon_roll

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Specializes in NICU.

West coast, new grads start at around $32, I passed $100,000 last year. Yes, it costs more to live here, but it was a good move for us.

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People seem to either forget or don't think about all the responsibility that nurses have and how technical our jobs truly are. Every day I went to work I knew that I was responsibile for the lives of at least 25 people if not more. I had to be on the top of my game every work day or something really horrible could happen. Somehow, I had to leave my personal problems at the door, not think about how tired I was or how much my back hurt, how I just didn't want to deal with any more stress in my life right now...forget all this and be a nurse.

I think nurses even tend to take all of the stress and sickness for granted because we do it every day and have become "used" to it. Nurses are the ones who deal with patients and family and doctors for 8,12,16, etc hours a shift. We do things for patients that no one wants to do, even us, yet we do it anyway because it is needed.

I had to demand my days off, demand to go home after a shift because I just could not do overtime, demand my requested time off, demand to stay home when I was sick, and demand to be treated with respect from my peers and others.

The very least a nurse is deserving of is health care for the rest of the nurse's life. I was paid alright at the end of my career (pay that my union had to fight for since it was not given readily by any of the hospitals I worked for) but when I left, I left with nothing. My teacher friends, my firemen friends, my company friends, all have pensions and benefits for life. Nurses must depend on medicare or what they were able to save while working. :innerconf

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I'm in the Kansas/Missouri area and I believe RN's start out around $20/hr with good benefits. Maybe by the time I'm done with school it will be up to $30/hr. LOL

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I have been in nursing as an LPN and then as an RN for close to 25years. There are two areas that bother me about this profession: First, nursing is a HIGH RISK profession and secondly, with the power we have as a group why are we still struggling to make a living in this profession. Why the shortage in nursing? lack of respect for the profession and poor pay.

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Specializes in Cardiac.

I'm in NE Ohio and work for a large healthcare system. As a new grad in June, with a diploma and Assoc. degree under my belt, I started at $22.50/hr. As of my last pay stub, I grossed about $28k from June-Dec, and 2 months of that was at a lower pay rate due to not yet being licensed. It is certainly an income that one can live on. Maybe not well, but it sure beats the $11/hour I was making when I processed claims for an insurance company. That being said, I don't believe we are fairly compensated at all. When you take into account the amount of responsibilities that we have--from pt. care to covering LPNs to dealing with docs, passing meds, etc, etc, etc, the scale is tipped far too far to the responsibility side and not far enough to the salary side. Never mind the wear and tear on our bodies, the stress, and the amount of education that we have to get to become RN's. If we could just go to work every day and do the job that we were trained to do minus all the other stuff, it would be fair, or at least in the realm of fair.

I do also think that like teachers, police officers, firefighters, and the like, nurses should be classified as public servants and should be entitled to the benefits as such.

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