FNP Oversaturation

Specialties NP

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I am in school for FNP. I keep hearing that it will be hard to find a job because of how many people are doing FNP. This has got me thinking I should maybe switch specialites. Is this gonna be a real problem? I live in a rural area and don't mind working here.

Specializes in Emergency Dept, ICU.

I am in school now for my ACNP/FNP DNP dual program for this reason. If the market gets saturated I need to make sure I am a step above with the DNP and dual certification. It may not help much but anything helps.

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Specializes in Internal Medicine.
hdrn90 said:
This is disheartening, does anyone have experience in switching/adding a specialty? For example, you're already and an FNP but go back to school for Adult?

I got my AGACNP after getting my FNP. Took a little over a year in a post master program.

For people despairing about market saturation for FNP's, there are a few things that matter.

1) FNP has and will be the most common type of NP there is.

-Prior to more specialized programs for peds and acute care becoming common, the FNP was the go-to choice. Even when I went back at the beginning of the decade, I looked at my hospital (West Texas) NP provider list, and everyone was an FNP. There were literally only 2 ACNP's with hospital access and 4 neonatal NPs. Dozens of FNP's. I chose FNP for that reason even though AGACNP was a better fit and available. Today, with more focused programs available, the climate is changing.

2) The salary you start at is not a barometer of where you will be in a few years.

-When I started I was making $90k a year with productivity bonuses (which was a little better than my RN pay and more work-life balance), a year and half later, I increased to $110k with a different company, also with incentive bonuses. The year following, a hospitalist group in our neighbor city in New Mexico raised my base to 170k (with hefty bonus incentives). In a short time I have almost doubled my pay.

3) Experience pays.

-See the above. I would have never landed the more lucrative positions as a new grad, but like being a new RN, after about a year or so of experience, your value goes up a lot.

4) Location, location, location

-A lot of folks talking about saturation are in populated areas like the Midwest, SoCal, NorCal, and Washington. Supply and demand. The more an area is pumping out new grads or more people move there, the lower employers can push down wages. There will be people willing to take less to get their feet wet. This is common sense and it blows my mind when I read these posts with people thinking getting their NP was going to be a fast track to easy money, and halfway through school they realized what they had done. School is expensive and if you didn't do your research, shame on you.

-This is not just true for NP's either. A close friend of mine was trying to move to Chicago after CRNA school and the pay there was terrible. He chose West Texas for double the salary and a much lower cost of living.

-My spouse was recently offered a job in Hawaii, but when hospitals there wanted to offer me 70k less than what I'm currently making for the exact same job in an area where houses are 2-3 times as much, we said no way. I was in no way surprised by this though. Again, more desirable locations will have more competition and tighter wages when there is a larger pool of providers.

Do your research!

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Riburn3 said:
I got my AGACNP after getting my FNP. Took a little over a year in a post master program.

For people despairing about market saturation for FNP's, there are a few things that matter.

1) FNP has and will be the most common type of NP there is.

-Prior to more specialized programs for peds and acute care becoming common, the FNP was the go-to choice. Even when I went back at the beginning of the decade, I looked at my hospital (West Texas) NP provider list, and everyone was an FNP. There were literally only 2 ACNP's with hospital access and 4 neonatal NPs. Dozens of FNP's. I chose FNP for that reason even though AGACNP was a better fit and available. Today, with more focused programs available, the climate is changing.

2) The salary you start at is not a barometer of where you will be in a few years.

-When I started I was making $90k a year with productivity bonuses (which was a little better than my RN pay and more work-life balance), a year and half later, I increased to $110k with a different company, also with incentive bonuses. The year following, a hospitalist group in our neighbor city in New Mexico raised my base to 170k (with hefty bonus incentives). In a short time I have almost doubled my pay.

3) Experience pays.

-See the above. I would have never landed the more lucrative positions as a new grad, but like being a new RN, after about a year or so of experience, your value goes up a lot.

4) Location, location, location

-A lot of folks talking about saturation are in populated areas like the Midwest, SoCal, NorCal, and Washington. Supply and demand. The more an area is pumping out new grads or more people move there, the lower employers can push down wages. There will be people willing to take less to get their feet wet. This is common sense and it blows my mind when I read these posts with people thinking getting their NP was going to be a fast track to easy money, and halfway through school they realized what they had done. School is expensive and if you didn't do your research, shame on you.

-This is not just true for NP's either. A close friend of mine was trying to move to Chicago after CRNA school and the pay there was terrible. He chose West Texas for double the salary and a much lower cost of living.

-My spouse was recently offered a job in Hawaii, but when hospitals there wanted to offer me 70k less than what I'm currently making for the exact same job in an area where houses are 2-3 times as much, we said no way. I was in no way surprised by this though. Again, more desirable locations will have more competition and tighter wages when there is a larger pool of providers.

Do your research!

Excellent points.. It is not just NPs who get low offers in more populated areas. I have several physicians I work with who have shared similar stories where areas where people want to live have lower salaries. It is supply and demand. I did my research while I was in NP school and found a low cost of living with a high demand and I am glad I did.

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Specializes in Critical Care and ED.
mmutk said:
I am in school now for my ACNP/FNP DNP dual program for this reason. If the market gets saturated I need to make sure I am a step above with the DNP and dual certification. It may not help much but anything helps.

Wise, especially considering that the consensus model is now starting to be enforced, and many hospitals are not hiring FNPs to work inpatient, and in some cases the BON is not allowing it. This is why I am glad I went the AGACNP route. I have a feeling we will be the new "hot" item when all the FNPs realize that they're being frozen out of in-patient positions. This is already happening. I was just speaking the other day with an FNP who was offered an inpatient cardiology job but then had issues getting credentialed because he only had an FNP. He had to turn the job down.

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Specializes in Internal Medicine.
OllieW said:
Excellent points.. It is not just NPs who get low offers in more populated areas. I have several physicians I work with who have shared similar stories where areas where people want to live have lower salaries. It is supply and demand. I did my research while I was in NP school and found a low cost of living with a high demand and I am glad I did.

Absolutely. My hospitalist group has physicians that live in Houston or Dallas that commute here every other week because the pay for them is so much better than where they live. These are fulltime staff with us, not Locums.

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Specializes in Psychiatric and Mental Health NP (PMHNP).
ICUman said:
What an interesting theory, considering your own posting history and commentary.

I do not understand your comment. I have never complained about being an NP, my job, or my compensation.

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What school are you going to for the AGACNP, and are you working while taking classes?

Also, they say its NP is suppose to rapidly grow on the BLS...

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socal1 said:

Also, they say its NP is suppose to rapidly grow on the BLS...

Why would anyone trust the BLS? Their predictions are far off, take a look at last decades predictions and you'll see for yourself,

Not an accurate/realistic source.

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Specializes in Critical Care and ED.
socal1 said:
What school are you going to for the AGACNP, and are you working while taking classes?

Also, they say its NP is suppose to rapidly grow on the BLS...

I'm in the last couple semesters of the AGACNP program at UCONN. I am working full time throughout the process. Not easy, but doable. Because I'm in acutes I can do my clinicals evenings or weekends which makes things more flexible. I also take off some PTO days so I can do mid-week day shifts too to get exposure to that too. That's the advantage we have over FNP students because they have to do clinicals in outpatient offices which means Mon-Fri for the most part.

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djmatte said:
So what should the expectation be?. My salary literally went up 30k a year when I switched from RN to np. What I make for now is exceeding what the market was making when I entered school. What exactly do you think you're worth in an industry that only has a handful of states that offer true autonomy with no collaborator requirement?

My state has 100% autonomy and I expect to be compensated for that. This is a tech haven and there are mid 20s kids with comm degrees making more than NPs at almost every tech company. 120k (capped) in a city where the average home is 750K+ is a joke. I have no idea where you live but I guarantee the cost of living isn't close to the west coast.

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Dranger said:
My state has 100% autonomy and I expect to be compensated for that. This is a tech haven and their are mid 20s kids with comm degrees making more than NPs at almost every tech company. 120k (capped) in a city where the average home is 750K+ is a joke. I have no idea where you live but I guarantee the cost of living isn't close to the west coast.

Do you need a collaborator with that autonomy?

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djmatte said:
Do you need a collaborator with that autonomy?

No, not in WA

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