I'm new to the forum but love the blogs/educational opportunities and discussions and hope to offer as much help as I received here during nursing school.
I just had a question. I've been a medic for about 8 years. Has anyone had any experience with going from medic to RN and whether they will compensate you for your time as a medic or not?? Like when I start applying for a nursing job is that something they will take into consideration you think? Any ideas on the best negotiation strategies in this situation. I'm having a hard time understanding why I'm fixing to get a huge pay cut going from medic to nursing after I just busted my tail for a year. I understand it's a completely different beast, however much of my knowledge and skill set will be much more evident vs a traditional grad. I really love my job as a medic but just want to go home to the fam every night instead of working 24 hr shifts. Plus nursing is much more stable and lobbied?? hope i spelled that right. lol.
I just applied for an ED RN position at my local level 2 hospital and they do pay for medic experience above and beyond a starting RN pay. The RN pay is already the best around here and the fact that I will make more than other new RN grads is quite nice, so yes it does happen. I should also mention that the RN pay is more than medic pay around here also.
Quick tip to OP.... don't post anything with the words medic or paramedic in it....... you will rarely get a warm crowd on this forum. There are some kind nurses on here that will not immediately take offense to medic and turn it into a medic vs nurse debate, but if you do some searching on AN you will see what I'm talking about. Just saying- not a very medic friendly site at times.
Sorry, you will have some clinical skills' advantages, going in, because you have some first responder skills, but nursing is the follow up! You'll get no life skills pass, nor should you, as you are dealing with someone's child, mother, family, not inanimate objects...there is no "do over" for operator error.
You have the experience to stabilize..but not the education, know how, rationale for what comes 'after'.
You can't really short cut attaining a RN degree...the 'book' knowledge is far more important than you are giving it credit..as you will soon realize. You will be amazed with what you don't know that you thought you did :-) If you are going into nursing because of a perceived financial reward or better hours, or anything except that you are dedicated and sincerely love nursing...you may want to rethink that choice..you'll be miserable and pass it along to your coworkers and patients.
As it is, there are too many grumpy/incompetent nurses stressing everyone out..because they wanted a "stable" job, 8 hour shifts, free weekends, holidays off, not a career dedicated to helping people!
Examine your motivation. This is not meant to be a downer but a suggestion that you realize that getting your RN won't be easy...nor will the job, after you get the degree. Your hours/pay will mimic the fact that you will be low man on the totem pole as a new 'inexperienced grad'!!!
Oh god, the charting. And now we have lovely electronic patient care reports too. Medics chart but we don't chart all day on one patient. Reyndonn, don't you love trying to reconstruct the scene to chart after a "yard sale" code.
It is an absolute nightmare. We use zoll EPCR which is a great program but man, trying to put down every single little intervention right on the time it happened is crazy. We have all kinds of tricks to keep track of everything but in the end its all estimated. Plus now we're asking for insurance info. If we transport a patient or treat and no transport a patient we have to make a copy of all their insurance info and scan to the EPCR plus put it in manually too. Even worse than a code is RSI. When we do this we have to document every little thing. Of course the baseline assessment, vitals. Then vitals every 3min while your prepping and doing the RSI. Time of every drug to the second, intubation with confirmation x 10 lol, etc.. Literally after an RSI I have 75 interventions that must be documented with pre RSI documentation, post RSI documentation and everything in between. It's a nightmare. So long are the days of paper...
I work 24s as a medic too and there's a huge difference. When I work a 24 I do not get to go home and sleep in the same bed as my husband or get to put my kids to bed. Working 12s at the hospital you get to do both and you get to do that every night if you're on days. Big difference.
AMeN. That's the bigggg issue for me. I want to go home. We have 12 hour units but the pay is worse over the long term. If you pick up a 24 you make 24hr pay so there's really no incentive. Plus where we work the employer mandates additional shift on top of the reg shifts which makes noone want to help. We're currently 16 medics short and have like 30 trucks so its a huge challenge. No more forced overtime for hospital nurses - Houston Chronicle
As you can see by this article. Nurses don't have to worry about that. I've searched and searched and tried and tried and for medics. . . well. . we have no support for this.
Depending on where you obtained your Paramedic training, some of your courses "might" transfer. The only way to know is to send transcripts in to the school where you'll be doing your RN.
I have seen a Paramedic to RN program, can't remember where. I want to say Oklahoma or Texas. You can probably do an online search for that.
So… the answer is… you "might" get "some" credit, but you might get zero. Oh and don't believe everything you read about how great things are for nurses vs EMTs. haha. Good luck.
There's one at Tarrant County College … others I'm sure.
Specializes in Cardiac (adult), CC, Peds, MH/Substance.
A couple things.
I think most points have been addressed, so I'll try not to be redundant.
* Most CRNA schools are three years long or more that I'm aware of. They also generally require a certain amount of ICU or PACU experience. Some accept ER exerience, I'm not sure how many. I've heard that ICU experience tends to get a heavier nod, but I'm not sure how true that is. So it's not something where you're just going to walk out of a BSN school and say, "Alright, time to start CRNA school!" CRNA programs are very competitive to get into. Also, don't plan on sleeping the entire time you're in one.
* He's in Texas, I think. Yes? APRNs / NPs in Texas cannot operate completely independently. They have more autonomy than PAs, but they still have a 'collaborating physician.' NPs in Texas can't prescribe certain medications, IE Hydrocodone most recently.
* You can "be your own boss," with no license. There's a group of clinics, I think about 15, owned by a couple APRNs in my area in Texas, though they still have THEIR employees listed as collaborating physicians. They're the boss, but not medically in charge, per se. Of course, they could fire the person medically in charge, and hire someone else. They're the boss. A PA could be "the boss" too, if they put down the capital to start/run the business.
With that said, I do agree that APRNs are more independent in Texas. They still have MD/DO oversight though.
I'm new to the forum but love the blogs/educational opportunities and discussions and hope to offer as much help as I received here during nursing school.
I just had a question. I've been a medic for about 8 years. Has anyone had any experience with going from medic to RN and whether they will compensate you for your time as a medic or not?? Like when I start applying for a nursing job is that something they will take into consideration you think? Any ideas on the best negotiation strategies in this situation. I'm having a hard time understanding why I'm fixing to get a huge pay cut going from medic to nursing after I just busted my tail for a year. I understand it's a completely different beast, however much of my knowledge and skill set will be much more evident vs a traditional grad. I really love my job as a medic but just want to go home to the fam every night instead of working 24 hr shifts. Plus nursing is much more stable and lobbied?? hope i spelled that right. lol.
Thoughts?
I misread your original post. Please ignore my comments.
I did rotations in a hospital where a few, scattered RNs were NREMT-Ps. The hospital offered a bonus to nurses with a national certification, and for those that were NREMT-Ps they were considered to have a national cert. so they got paid more. Not the norm probably.
Specializes in Cardiac (adult), CC, Peds, MH/Substance.
It didn't sound like a question of, "I'm thinking about being a paramedic then going into nursing in a decade." More like, "Will this help me in the short term?" The answer is "maybe a little, but probably more effort than help. There are better options based on your apparent endgame desire."
~agape~
83 Posts
I just applied for an ED RN position at my local level 2 hospital and they do pay for medic experience above and beyond a starting RN pay. The RN pay is already the best around here and the fact that I will make more than other new RN grads is quite nice, so yes it does happen. I should also mention that the RN pay is more than medic pay around here also.