Nurse manager

[GivingLove]

I was wanting to know to be a nurse manager, do you deal with the paperwork alone, or the patients as well? Also, whats the salary like or pay? And do you have to work as an RN first to be a nurse manager? Thanks everyone!

[llg, PhD, RN]

It's mostly dealing with personnel issues (working on staff problems) and managing the resources required to run your unit. So, it's mostly "office time" and "meetings" -- but not necessarily paperwork. It's a mix of dealing with people (the staff and colleagues in other departments) and paperwork. You may ocassionally provide direct patient care, but there is usually little time for that. Many (but not all) of your patient contact occurs when there has been a problem or complaint of some sort and you staff has brought that problem to you to solve.

The pay for a beginning manager is often less than that of the more experienced staff members. But senior managers usually make more than most staff members. There is an overlap in the pay ranges.

Yes ... you do need experience as a staff member before you can be an effective leader/manager of the team.

[GivingLove]

Thanks for the reply!

[tencat]

I would certainly recommend you spend time in the 'trenches' before you become a manager, otherwise you would have NO CLUE how things work and what your employees have to deal with day in and day out.