Nursing in France- ICU Salary...

Home Health Columnist / Guide · Nov 26, 2014

Moved to International Nursing for chance of response...not many members from France.

Guest805836 · Jan 28, 2015

Heh, I work in cardiac ICU in the south of France :)

This really depends on where you are working (private or public sector) and what 'convention' they have (a standartised guide of number of vacation days, pay grades...etc.)

In the public sector, the salary is fixed by your 'grade', which is basically correlated with the number of years you've been working (your 'anciennetÃ©'). There are other factors, like your yearly evaluation, which can get you promoted to a higher grade earlier; but that is more of an exception. Bear in mind, that when you are hired, you start at zero years of experience and it takes them oodles of time to take into consideration your past experiences (and even then, they only factor in a percentage of it...).

In the private sector, like I said, the salary depends on their 'convention', but they are more open to negociation. However, after discussion with colleagues in the private sector, their don't get raises as regularly or as easily.

As an example, I have five years work experience in my hospital, started working there straight out of nursing school, and I work night shifts exclusively. I work one out of two week ends. My average number of hours a week is 70 (actually 20 one week and 50 the next). I can't give an exact figure, because this varies by number of holidays/week-ends/nights worked, but I generally get around 1850â‚¬/month net. When I started working (night shifts also), it was more along the lines of 1600â‚¬/month net.

Yes, nurses are most emphatically NOT among the best paid jobs in France... Le sigh. Oh well. At least I have oodles of vacation time (counting holidays, vacation and overtime compensation : 54 days a year!).