So you're an RN - you must be earning big!

Nurses General Nursing

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Specializes in Community Health, Med/Surg, ICU Stepdown.

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area nurses can easily make over $100,000 a year and I have many friends making over $200,000 with overtime or multiple jobs... but keep in mind the average rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in SF is currently $4,484 a month! I agree that we do make good money as nurses but not enough for the amount of responsibility we hold. However, I am feeling much more grateful for my salary after reading the responses of the first responders in this thread... medics and firefighters hold HUGE responsibility and are severely underpaid. I don't understand how we can expect people to handle the stress of an EMS job and pay them so little. I have never inserted an IO or started an IV in a moving ambulance and I really admire EMS workers... you deserve an enormous raise!

CurtisSchooler

15 Posts

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area nurses can easily make over $100,000 a year and I have many friends making over $200,000 with overtime or multiple jobs... but keep in mind the average rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in SF is currently $4,484 a month! I agree that we do make good money as nurses but not enough for the amount of responsibility we hold. However, I am feeling much more grateful for my salary after reading the responses of the first responders in this thread... medics and firefighters hold HUGE responsibility and are severely underpaid. I don't understand how we can expect people to handle the stress of an EMS job and pay them so little. I have never inserted an IO or started an IV in a moving ambulance and I really admire EMS workers... you deserve an enormous raise!

$4484 a month!!

Not in Sacramento or Solano County.

is 90 min each way worth it?

Down in Barstow, you can get a 4 bedroom apartment for $500. If you like 130 degrees!

There's an article about a Google engineer who would drive 3.5 hours each way from Mariposa (Yosemite area) to Mountainview 5 days a week!!

Oldmahubbard

1,487 Posts

All interesting. There are many non-nursing M-F, 9-5 jobs, where one sits at a desk. Most require a bachelor's degree, and pay less than nursing. Average starting pay for these positions is maybe 40k, if you are lucky. The pay is based on the job market and a glut of graduates.

HHmm, desk work, M-F, 9-5, no holidays or weekends, and low stress. No heavy lifting. Sound like nursing?

This is comparing tangerines and lobster. Nurses earn every nickel.

HiddenAngels

976 Posts

First I will laugh at this headline, then I will read the post.

HiddenAngels

976 Posts

What a crock! For all the time we spend and how on point we have to be over the course of 12 hours or 8 hours or whatever your shifts are.. Doctors current salaries are where ours should be. I don't care if they make more than us, that's not the point. The point is we deserve a heck of a lot more! We do a lot! Assess a lot. Observe a lot! Jump in a lot! Put up with a lot! Chart a lot! Stand a lot! Stay late a lot! No breaks! No real lunches! I can go on and on..

Horseshoe, BSN, RN

5,879 Posts

What a crock! For all the time we spend and how on point we have to be over the course of 12 hours or 8 hours or whatever your shifts are.. Doctors current salaries are where ours should be. I don't care if they make more than us, that's not the point. The point is we deserve a heck of a lot more! We do a lot! Assess a lot. Observe a lot! Jump in a lot! Put up with a lot! Chart a lot! Stand a lot! Stay late a lot! No breaks! No real lunches! I can go on and on..

Considering the amount of education and training doctors must obtain, and the increased responsibility (and therefore liability) they have, they SHOULD be making far more than nurses. But I agree that nurses are not paid what they are worth.

Then again, neither are teachers, firefighters, etc.

Specializes in Cosmetic RN.
Like the previous posters mentioned, it's subjective so I don't get irritated at all. I'll make more than most of my friends and family members, so from their perspective, I'm doing great.

I agree with you.. it very subjective and all a matter of perspective.

PMFB-RN, RN

5,351 Posts

Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
However, I am feeling much more grateful for my salary after reading the responses of the first responders in this thread... medics and firefighters hold HUGE responsibility and are severely underpaid. I don't understand how we can expect people to handle the stress of an EMS job and pay them so little. I have never inserted an IO or started an IV in a moving ambulance and I really admire EMS workers... you deserve an enormous raise!

The answer is romance. I used to be a dairy farmer. There is NO romance in dairy farming, but dairy farmers make a LOT more money than ranchers, but ranching has ROMANCE! They are always making movies about ranchers, (there is a new Kevin Costner plays a rancher movie about to come out as I write this) you've never seen a movie about dairy farming. People WANT to be cowboys and ranchers, wear cool hats and ride horses around through gorgeous western scenery. More people want to do that than are really needed, hence cowboy wages are rock bottom. Dairy farming, which is also tending cattle for a living, has no romance, no cool hats, no horses, It's typically done on ordinary eastern and Midwestern flat land farms, not the beautiful Bighorn Mountains. Dairy farming is a daily slog of repetitive tasks. An employee on a dairy farm will make 3 or 4 times as much as a cowboy, but won't have any admiring fans. "I milk cows for a living" is NOT a good pick up line with the ladies in bars. Walk into that bar dressed as a REAL cowboy and ladies will line up to talk to you.

Paramedics & EMS are the cowboys and ranchers of the medical world. They are the ones you see on the big screen. Nurses are the dairy farmers, better paid, but never have movies made about them and if they shows up on screen at all it's as doctor's sex toys or hand maidens.

We CAN cheat the system though, at least a few of us. My previous job was critical care transport, ground and air ambulance with a 3 person team. The RN team leader, paramedic, and EMT who was also the driver or pilot. We wore cool flight suits, even when doing ground transport in ambulances. As the RN team leader I made at least twice what the paramedic did, and sometimes more, even though our jobs were mostly interchangeable during transport.

Make some movies that show nurses as romantic heroes doing an exciting job and watch our wages fall.

Specializes in Med/Surg.

To put it one way, this is the highest paid job I've ever had.

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