Are you satisfied with your current employment situation as a nurse?

adireen · Dec 2, 1999

Hear hear JeanBean! I'm with you!

Good point about making that anywhere else with an associate's degree! I, too, have a BS degree in something other than nursing and was topped out in "a great job" at $11.50 per hour. I will be living large (at least larger) as an RN off their salaries.

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Irene

Roach · Dec 2, 1999

This is for Adireen. I hope and pray that after one year of working as an RN you still feel the same as you do now. It does sound great when you are a student and are looking forward to the pay and the work. After you have been thrown into the fire it is a whole other feeling. I have been working for eight years and as a staff nurse am making 16.50/hr.(wow) I will be going "agency" in January and feel I have enough experience and now am in a situation to do so. A lot of nurses have families to support and depend on the health insurance and benefits that you only get with a staff position. Plus if you have a family you aren't exactly in the position to travel.(they want 13 week contracts) Should these nurses leave their families to make this money? I think not. The hospitals should try to make the staff nurses happier and that would in turn keep them longer. One of these days when your feet are throbbing and your back is aching after three or four twelve hour shifts you too will say to yourself "They don't pay me enough to do this s---." Hee Hee. Keep up the good attitude and I really hope you find a good job that makes you happy.

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Roach

radnur · Dec 2, 1999

If nursing was not my first passion and I held a degree in something else prior to my BSN, I would be satisfied as well, especially if my experience in my first area of interest was not self fulling personally or financially.

But for the nurses who have been in this field from the beginning, I feel your pain.

There are times in which I feel I do not know my patients like I should in order to provide holistic care to my patient as taught in nursing school. I only have time to treat the physical aspect of my patients problem. I am a critical care nurse, for the most part I enjoy what I do but the pay does not "cut the cheese". Full time pay $18.00

(Maryland,Virginia) PRN $28.00, well of course I chose PRN. At one hospital in Virginia Housekeeping department was cut. There is one person assigned to your unit for that duty, if that person is absent then the nurse tech or the RN has to clean the room (toilet, floor, bed, sink etc.) Can you believe that is part of the orientation. WHO SAYS NURSES GET PAID WELL?

ICU-RN · Dec 2, 1999

I never wanted to be a nurse..but got burnt out in another field and decided that the adn program was the fastest way to get an education and into a field that seemed to be respected, & make a decent wage..when i started nursing school and began to see that nusring was so much more than a job i began to fall in love with it. the challanges ,, the long hours the pay all just appeal to me.

yes some times it gets to be too much and sometimes the Docs act like you don't now your butt from a bed pan. but for the most part i wouldn't trade this for anything. so after all that Yes i am happy with my career.

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nursing isn't just a job..it's a lifestyle

mevans · Dec 3, 1999

I am an RN, BSN in NE pennsylvanina. I love nursing, not for the money, obviously, but for the patients.

SALARY IN OUR AREA STARTS AT $12.50 PER HOUR WITH ONE YEAR EXPERIENCE RN. AS FOR THE OVERTIME, WHY DO WE HAVE TO WORK 50-60 HOURS A WEEK TO MAKE A LIVING?

LPN's start at $10 CNA's @8-9/hr. so why don't we get paid during our big nursing shortage? because, adrieen, we are replaced by TECHS, A TECH IS AN UNLICENSED ASSISTIVE PERSONELL THAT CAN DO EVERYTHING, EVEN TRAINED TO HOOK UP DIALYSIS TO A PATIENT AND MONITOR IT. Only if they are a tech level III. our patients love there nurses, but with all the different titles, and nursing department on their tags, it is difficult to know who is who. So yes, we should complain about the lack of pay, and the lack of respect and we should look to each other for support, their are a lot of nurses in all areas and if we came together instead of fighting with each other than maybe we could get what we deserved.

Did you know that an LPN in our state can monitor an already existing central line? I ordered a copy of our state board of nursing practice act and that was a notice that was attached. Did you know that pharmacists in our area start at $30 and they are BSN degree? the solution is that we need some kind of homogentiy in nursing. A nurse is a person with a "degree". we all need to have the same degree so that people know what they get. Not a 18month degree or a 24month degree or a 3 year degree or a 4year degree, a nurse has a blank yr degree and we need to all go out and get it. there are plenty of on line and at home schools now where we can all go out and get our BSN's and start at the 30/hr our pharmacists start at. or at least all start at 20.

mevans · Dec 3, 1999

oh and for the traveling nurses, you mostly have to pay for your own lodging and expenses and their cases are around large cities, not too good if you don't live by one. and there are no benefits for the family. It's a good opportunity if you are single, but most of the students in our nursing schools are single mothers.

*** the cost of school, most hospitals and agencies offer tuition reimbursement. our manager is going for her BSN one class at a time for free. check out scholorships, you'd be surprised.

*** where else can you make such great money with an associates degree and equivicating nursing with a degree in history, YOU CAN'T KILL SOMEONE if you tell them the wrong date of the civil war.

And you with the AD degree, you are responsible for lives, and checking out the order of a person with an MEDICAL degree who went to medical school. Don't belittle yourself or your career, it is statements like this that have non-degree techs doing our jobs, because we are all blanketed under the lowest degree needed for our job.

If you knew that your childs teacher had only recieved her associates degree, how much of an education do you feel your child would get? all teachers are BSN and up, why as a profession do we allow ourselves to be split down in category to just a person with an AD degree, that goes to work and gets paid well (HA HA)?

we are much more than that, we are nurses, the people resposible for patients lives and that check doctors, pharmacists, therapists, to make sure they don't make a mistake. and let me ask you this, if they do make a mistake, who is the one ultimatley responsible???? the person that is looked upon as replacable and underpaid, understaffed and overworked. think about it.

[This message has been edited by mevans (edited December 03, 1999).]

LAARN · Dec 3, 1999

I still love nursing, but not my current employment situation. The problems where I work all stem from management. I work in a Birthing center that has been open for 5 1/2 years and we have had 6 managers!! We have had no consistency! This has lead to nervous, dissatisfied nurses. We have really felt unprotected and exposed because we have had no leadership. Upper management has been very unsupportive. What could be a great situation in a small unit has been a nightmare!! We have lost nurses left and right. I am also leaving to become a travel nurse. Most travel nurse companies provide free housing, free insurance and many other benefits. I am single so it will be great for me.

Money has never been the most important thing to me! I make a comfortable living. I think that the patient is always the loser when there are problems in our hospitals. That is what breaks my heart everyday in our profession. Most of us got into nursing to take care of patients, but what we mostly take care of is paperwork and insurance companies. Not a pretty picture is it?

ICU-RN · Dec 5, 1999

I don't care if someone has an msn/bsn/or an adn being book smart is nothing..we have all worked with the book smart nurse that knows how everything sould go and can't function if her patients illness doesn't follow the prescribed path..

its bedside smart that counts and that you get at the BEDSIDE.. of course you need a good base of nursing knowledge and that you get in all of the nursing degree programs..

I remain happy in my field because i like being at the bedside and always there is something new to learn there

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nursing isn't just a job..it's a lifestyle

3651bht · Dec 6, 1999

First of all let me state that I have not read any of the other postings in this site.Am I happy with my present nursing position? YES!! (At the risk of having nurses flocking to my place of employment I and the hospital I work for will remain unknown). I work in a 150 bed hospital, although our facility usually has a census of

KathyBarr · Dec 14, 1999

I am satisfied with my current position because of the excellent staffing my acute care unit maintains. I generally have 4 patients on a telemetry unit, which is great. I now need to find a new job closer to my home (I recently moved) and can't find any other facility that staffs this well. On the down side, the pay is very low for the area in which I live. In my opinion, the trade off is worth it.

Ron E · Feb 21, 2000

My personal experience with nursing has been a negative one. My previous career in the Marine Corps and private sector have made the problems in nursing intensified. I attended a BSN program, which was very difficult. Since becoming nurse, on a Telemetry unit, I have found my job very dissatisfying while receiving little respect. Nurses have huge amounts of responsibility with no power. We are a non-entity in a Physcian run health care system. Physcians talk to nurses like their dirt and have no respect for their input. This basically leaves nurses with zero input on patient care!!! The private sector would never let individuals get treated like nurses do. Why does the medical profession allow it? The magnitude of this problem is evident when we look at the current nursing shortage. In Maine, which is where I live, there are approximatly 2500 hundred RN openings. When the starting wage is 16-20 dollars Per/Hr for a new nurse, and this shortage still exists, we can easily see the magnitude of this problem. It is not about money, it is about coming home at night and feeling good about your involvement in a patients course of treatment. Currently I feel like a subservant maid, who is expected to bow down to physcians due to their title. I too did very well in school and could have persued many academic avenues, but I chose nursing due to my nature of wanting to help others. I am currently looking for another opportunity outside of Nursing........ Very dissappointed in Maine....

[This message has been edited by Ron E (edited February 21, 2000).]

MaxNurse · Feb 21, 2000

I'm seriously thinking about going back to school and getting my RN. I've been a LPN for 6 yrs now. At first I loved it, then reality set in LOL. It's true the stress is high, we're understaffed and the pay is low. I make $10/hr. The RN's where i work start out (0-5 yrs experience) at $15.00/hr. What I'm mostly fraustrated as an LPN is the lack of opportunity to advance (without returning to school for a RN degree). Seems LPN is a dead end road. With a RN you have the opportunity for Supervisor, DON, ADON and so on. It seems not to matter if you have an associates or a bachelors degree. I was a CNA prior to being an LPN and I decided to go back to school when i felt i was at a dead end road then as well.

One thing I've noticed reading the posts, and i dont understand it, is why is there such a big pay difference in LPNs and RNs but not LPNs and CNAs. Where i work like i said a RN makes $15+, LPN $10-11 tops and the CNAs $8-9/hr. Seems the gap should be smaller between the LPN and RN. A CNA trains for 100 hours in my state, a LPN for 1 1/2 yrs and an RN for 2 years. A CNA doesn't have the responsibility of meds, IVs, other invasive procedures and so on. So why's there such a small wage difference. Also where i work the only difference in LPN and RN is a RN can hang blood. So why's there such a large pay difference? Just curious.

Also i've read in some of the posts that people didnt get into nursing for the money. That may not have been the biggest reason, but for most of us it has a big influence. Not many people work for the fun of it! Working in the medical field is a big responsiblity, we're dealing with peoples' lives and I feel we should be well compensated for it! One mistake could cost someone their life and us our license. Seems this too would cause for some kind of legislation demanding staffing in facilities to be more adequate for patient loads.