Nursing pay..Check this out!

Nurses General Nursing

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Why is nursing pay across the board not standardized? What I am referring to is, why do nurses get paid more or less according to the cost of living across the USA and not according to skills a nurse possess? I am not sure for other nurses but my quality of care does not fluctuate as our pay does across state lines etc. If a nurse was getting paid a lot more for the same job in a different city then moves to a city where the pay is much lower for the same job, are we allowed to decrease the quality of our care just like the pay decrease the nurse will receive?

Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.

Love that OP posts an op-ed article from the UK to support preconceived belief. Pseudosci and cb ftw.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

To the OP he sounds disgruntled re his pay. There are resources available such as payscale and glass door that gives more info re average and median pay for nurses in different cities and even in hospital systems. It behooves oneself to check out that info before relocating.

Besides the wage variation among different cities and states, there is also wage compression so that even with experience you are not paid much more than a new grad. I've been a nurse over 20 years and I make about $10/hr more than a new grad, and I'm not at the max yet! One good thing about unions is you know the min and max wages and are not left in the dark. The best unions have a step system where your pay increases in step with each year of experience, but you need a really strong union to get this!

If I wanted to make more money I could choose to climb the ladder or switch to the system wide pool, but their are too many negative trade offs I'm not willing to make just for more money. The ladder where I work has a demotion clause and the requirements to maintain are constantly changing. To many people that frustration of jumping thru hoops and joining committees etc is a small price to pay for a 5-10% raise. For the pool you have to be willing to travel to half a dozen hospitals with your schedule changing on a daily basis and occasionally, even having to switch hospitals mid shift. Many are kept on standby notice where they don't even know where they are supposed to work until that morning! I'm not willing to do that even for another $10/hr. The pool has a lot of newer nurses trying to maximize their pay and some older ones nearing retirement. To each his own.

It used to be you could get a raise by changing jobs to another hospital system, but even this is no longer a given. While if you are a new grad you may get a pay raise, I've talked to others who took a pay cut to work at my hospital. Even others who were pressured to take a pay cut during negotiations at another hospital and the best they would offer in the end was the same pay the person was already making. So switching jobs is no longer a sure thing. One frustrated nurse decided to do travel nursing when all the job offers in her area were either offering a pay cut or just what she was making. But even travel nursing pay varies by company and you need to check out various companies and be able to negotiate to get the best deal.

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Specializes in Critical Care.
The cost of living.. is what it is. It is an INDEX that measures differences in the price of goods and services. The value of your service depends on your location. I have made 60 bucks an hour in Hawaii, 25 bucks in Detroit.

Wow! That must have been neat, living in Hawaii. I've had a real sweet vacation there, a once in a lifetime opportunity, and glad to check that off my bucket list. Next place to see is Alaska on a cruise tour in the summer. Hopefully one of these days! One of my coworkers took a travel assignment to Hawaii and spent a couple years there, but eventually went back home to be near family.

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Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
It's economics & capitalism. Labor is a commodity that hospital & other care providers purchase. They seek to spend as little as possible on this commodity / expense. It's like a physics experiment. They seek to apply as little force (money / resources) as possible to keep a nurse doing their job. Many of us do the same thing when we shop. If I want to purchase something I look for the cheapest price available for that commodity. For example, if I want to buy a particular model of TV I compare prices and go with the best deal. It's not a mean decision I just have to decide if I want to give the TV dealer more or less money. It's why there are no Mom & Pop TV stores left and Wally World and Amazon are booming. Ultimately its up to the individual nurse to decide how much she is willing to work for. If they don't offer you enough to keep working stop. If enough nurses agree with you wages will go up. One way to attempt to make this happen is unionization. I'm in a Union and I make considerably more money and with better benefits than the Nurses who work next door at another hospital.

But the nurses who work next door probably still make more money than they would if they weren't next to a union shop. That hospital has to compete with the unionized hospital to retain nurses.

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I beg to differ that the quality of care doesn't differ across the country. I now work for a national home infusion company. I am on site at a hospital that attracts patients from all over the country- specifically because the care is better. I had the unfortunate experience of having to send a child home to Alabama on NG feeds earlier this year. There is no doubt in my mind, based on my communications with our staff in Alabama, that this child received far inferior care down there than he would have if he had stayed in New England.

Was that child sent to a big city or small town. There are good centers of care in the different states, but certain levels of quality cannot be in every town. It doesn't make sense.

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But the nurses who work next door probably still make more money than they would if they weren't next to a union shop. That hospital has to compete with the unionized hospital to retain nurses.

Yup. In a nearby small city there are two hospitals. One is unionized and the other is not. One of my nursing professors used to work at the unionized hospital. She said it made her crazy to hear nurses from the other hospital be anti-union. She explained, "their raises always followed our raises. Our union would negotiate a raise, and the next thing would be their hospital giving them raises. And some of them never made the connection that their hospital wasn't just being nice."

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Specializes in CRNA, Finally retired.
So if we all make the same pay do we all move to small town USA in Mississippi or somewhere with a low cost of living to maximize our salary? And who's going to work in the high cost of living areas like San Fran when their pay would go so much further elsewhere?

Me!!! Couldn't pay me (literally) to live in most places.

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Specializes in Pedi.
Was that child sent to a big city or small town. There are good centers of care in the different states, but certain levels of quality cannot be in every town. It doesn't make sense.

Our office that was going to be servicing the child was located just outside of a major city. It was the most uneasy discharge I ever had and it was something that should have been very straight forward. Overnight NG feeds to supplement day-time PO intake. And this is a national company that claims to have standardized processes and levels of service across the country. The people I was dealing with didn't even understand that it was their job to respond to the parents if they called with a question or problem with the feeding pump that belonged to our company.

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Specializes in orthopedic/trauma, Informatics, diabetes.

My husband works for the government. He gets a base rate pay but then there is a differential for where we live. When we lived in Chicago, he got a much higher regional rate than what he gets here in NC. Chicago is ridiculously expensive. NC, not as much.

Same for me when I was a teacher. Unions up north determined pay, here in NC, same thing, regional differentials. No unions.

I know a lot people think the pay is ridiculously low here when they come from other areas, but I feel like I make a decent wage. I could not afford the home I own here in NC, if I lived in Chicago. It would cost 3 times as much and the taxes are insane. We can't all get paid the same. I just watched a show where milk is like $8 a gallon. I pay $2.50 here. I don't need as much money as someone in Alaska.

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Yep totally agree. My son lives in San Francisco with his girl and they both make a pretty good wage. However, the cost of living is so high they live like poor folks in a rundown apartment whose expense is outrageous. Basically they could have the same standard of living here if they both had a minimum wage job in Pittsburgh

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Because everyone gets paid this way. If not then we'd all move to where the cost of living was very low and keep our high paying city wages. Everyone one would be living in back woods USA, increasing metropolitan nursing shortages.

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They do not staff adequately for safety as it is.

Very true. Especially in North central WV

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