Does anyone regret leaving school nursing?

Wow that sucks

I'm seriously looking to break into new avenues of Nursing after having spent most of my experience in the ER, where things can get really dicey really fast. School nursing is an option for me, so I was wondering what the pay differential is?

On hospital wages, assuming you are not the only wage earner in your household, working two 12s a week should be enough to have the bennies of extra cash all the while not feeling like you're killing yourself from being on your feet all the time.

School nursing pay depends on the state your in. In my case I was on the teacher's pay scale and the amount of nursing experience you have would not matter as far as pay is concerned. You would start at the beginning of the pay scale for the teachers which is around $33,000 here (around $15/hr) and I make $25/hr at the hospital. (Our cost of living is very reasonable here.) I would make around $17/hr since I have some experience in the school system. It's not a lot compared to full-time at the hospital. However, when you consider school nurses only work 200 days a year I would actually make around $23/hr for the actual days worked which is comparible to part-time at the hospital. You are salary so you won't get paid extra for the after school staff meetings, open houses, etc that you are required to attend. I would suggest finding your board of education website and finding the salary posting if they have one and if not you can get it at the board of ed office and then I would also suggest substituting to get a better idea of what it's like to see if you like it. When I had gotten my first school nurse job I had never subbed so I really had no clue. Had I subbed first I probably wouldn't have taken the job but after I was hired I wanted to give it a year to see if I liked it and to not leave them hanging. It was a lot less stress and the hours worked well for my family but I really hated the 5 day work week and found it much more boring and school nurses don't get a lot of respect. I did really enjoy working with the kids, the autonomy, the less stress, the holidays/summers off so the positives outweighed the negatives for a while. If I had stayed at the school system all these years I would just now be making what I'm starting out at the hospital at which is another reason I'm having trouble commiting to it because I can make almost as much part-time at the hospital as full-time doing school nursing. Good luck with whatever you decide to do!