I'm curious which offer to you'd choose?

[PMHNP2023, RN]

I'm going to pose a hypothetical situation - Lets say a person was offered a position at a major hospital system in the emergency dept, where they want to work. The benefits are pretty good, the pay is the lowest out of all the local hospital systems, but the employee satisfaction is pretty high and it's the largest employer in the city.

This same person gets offered a med/surg job at a local academic teaching university. Not the job that they want per-se, but the benefits are excellent - pension, multiple health plans, vision, tons of holidays and sick days, etc...did I say pension?

Which one would you choose? Start in the place you want and get the ED experience and then try to move over to the other company that has the pension/benefits, or start in the place with the excellent benefits and hope to move out of med surg into the ED?

[Bouncyball]

Are you a new grad? Would you be able to live off the lower wages and no benefits?

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

This is not an unusual situation. Remember, no organization will pay more than they have to - to get applicants through the door. If a hospital has the highest salaries, there is undoubtedly a reason for this - LOL. Those 'high dollar' places frequently have the most demanding workloads - tight productivity standards. Conversely, when an organization has a reputation as "the place to learn", they don't have to provide all the other bells and whistles.

Here in Houston, the best known ED/Trauma center has a waiting list of qualified applicants... but they have the lowest salary/benefits. Quite simply, working there for 2-3 years provides a level of experience and training that just can't be matched anywhere else.

Only you can make the decision, based on where you are in your career and your personal situation. But - if that ED is like the one I described above, having that job on your resume will automatically put you into a much more elite status for the rest of your career.

[imintrouble, BSN, RN]

Most of life's choices are influenced by how much baggage we carry along with us. Husband, children, dogs, mortgage,.............

When I graduated, I already had all of the above. The luxury of choosing a job simply because it's what I wanted wasn't an option.

I would have chosen the job with the better benefits, over the job that provided the most personal satisfaction. Actually, I took the first job I could get.

If I'd been a single new grad, responsible for only myself, I might have held out for the job of my dreams. But then the job of my dreams definitely includes a pension.