It's all about the money.....I mean, the patients...

[Mursanary]

I must say, sometimes it is really annoying when nurses say,"If your in it for the money than you should not be a nurse".Most are hypocrites because the next day they are complaining about how they don't want to do hourly visits and the hospital does not pay them enough.....really??? lol

I am honest about the fact that it is about the money for me. I take great care of my patients and they loved my care and compassion. I pride myself in making people better and healthier. And because I know that I can provide customer satisfaction and happy patients in any environment I want to get the most $ possible for my time working as a nurse.

I am looking to further increase my salary because my agency is taking about 20-30% of what they are billing the hospital for my services. I know there are some people that have been running a business this way for years on this forum, such as NedRN, Expertusprn, renerian, phatlipboardz... and they are taking home the extra cash. I want to know how to take a bigger piece of the pie for my services, because I am the one doing the work! Whether that be starting my own agency where I work as the sole employee, or start being an independent contractor. I need some ideas of how others have increased their salary?

Ways I have already increased my salaries include:

-Moving hospitals and negotiating with Human resources

-Moving to critical care

-Becoming critical care agency nurse....this helped ALOT, but its unstable

...So, if you got any secret tips like: become a sales rep for medtronic, or work for a certain strike nursing company. I would really appreciate your input(nothing is bad advice)!

[brandiep1982]

I don't have any tips for you bc I just don't know anything about finding ways to make more money beyond finding higher paying hospitals. I did want to say something about the "in it for the money" thing. I have heard this phrase many times my whole life with all the nurses in my family. Whenever I heard it, and currently hear it, I don't take it to mean "If you care about money at all, don't be a nurse". I always took it to mean "If you only want to go into nursing because you will make decent money, and you really couldn't care less about taking care of people, you really should not be a nurse."

I love taking care of people. I love learning about the mind and body (soul as well, but that isn't quite relevant). I love learning about diseases, research... but I also would really like to make a healthy pay check. It isn't my primary reason for becoming a nurse, but it is important.

[OrganizedChaos, LVN]

Well doesn't *everyone* want to be paid more?

[Sanhect1]

How about starting your own cna program

[NedRN]

While I'm not discouraging you in any way as I have myself started my own agency to cut out the middleman, some of that 20 to 40 percent cut the agency "takes" (also known as gross profit margin) goes to expenses. Expenses include marketing costs such as establishing contracts with facilities and acquiring nurses (you already have that taken care of). They also include office costs, phone lines, web sites, professional and general Liability Insurance, workers comp, unemployment insurance, invoicing, and carrying costs of accounts payable (I've been close to having hospital owe me 200K).

One expense you may not have thought of is employer side of FICA at 7.65% of income. While this is not part of the agency gross profit margin, it still surprises the nurse transitioning from employee to contractor getting hit with a 15.3% self-employment tax before even considering federal, state, and local income tax.

Mind you, the agency takes care of all these expenses and makes a fair (net) profit for the owner, so you can do it too and come out ahead. You also have the ability to get a higher bill rate as you are only negotiating for one profile (yourself).

The issue to me is establishing a strictly local agency with just one nurse. I think it would be much easier to form a travel company and do local contracts of 13 weeks with scheduled shifts. Then hospitals won't call you daily with staffing needs. Two problems with that of course, one being your staff job security blanket. The other is that local hospitals may not accept a local "traveler" to avoid contaminating their local worker pool. Depends on the culture of the area and the specific hospitals. The staff job could swing to per diem (to maintain your security blanket) if you land a contract.