My wife has been an RN now for 2.5 years and worked at a big local hospital in Med/Surge that entire time. Her first year she made $74,000 and the second year $64,000 because in the second year she cut back on the amount of overtime.
She has always wanted to go into Hospice, it's the reason she got into nursing so now she has interviewed at a place and they offered her an on call position. It's 7 days on and 7 days off. Monday-Friday it's 4:30pm until 8 am and on Saturday/Sunday she'd be on call the entire time. So it's on call 125 hours a week but the next week she gets the full 7 off.
They offered a salary of $50,000 plus .48 cents a mile when she gets called out. They showed her some call records for the past 2 weeks so she could see how often she'd be getting called out.
My wife is excited and wants to take the job immediately but I'm trying to think of the big picture here. I'm gonna end up working many extra hours to make up for the pay she will lose. She went back and told the Director of Nursing that she was concerned with the 50k salary and was told they would see what they could do. Today the DoN called back and said her boss told them it was the industry standard rate of pay and they couldn't make any exceptions. She tried to win my wife over by telling her that she probably won't be working more than 25 hours a week because they don't have a lot of call outs on average. She also told her that even though she had 2.5 years of hospital experience, she didn't have any hospice experience so they can't fight for more pay. She said if she had 5 years of hospice experience then they might could push back for a little more but even then she said it might only be a few thousand more a year.
I don't know if they are trying to low ball her or if they are telling the truth. Anyone else work hospice 7 on and 7 off and can tell me if this is about the industry standard? You don't have to tell me what you make(I know most don't like to talk about it) but just let me know if my wife is getting low balled? If this makes her happy I don't mind working more hours at my job but I'd rather spend that time with my family. Our bills aren't up to what we make but they are close as we just bought a new minivan and last year we purchased a camp home on a lake so I'm paying 2 mortgages. She ain't worried but I am if you know what I mean.
