Compensation is an extremely important aspect for the overwhelming majority of people who must work for a living, including the nurses who claim to do their jobs for purely altruistic reasons. Salary surveys can empower nurses because they unearth valuable information.
As we welcome the dawn of a propitious new year that is brimming with plenty of promise and new beginnings, I wanted to bring up a topic that is influential to most people. Of course, the topic at hand is compensation.
While job satisfaction, personal gratification, altruism, achievement of individual goals, a love of science or a fondness for helping patients heal are all deeper reasons why many people might enter and/or stay in the nursing profession in the face of an increasingly challenging era in healthcare provision, it would be disingenuous to deny the significance of pay.
Salary is an important component for the vast majority of people who must work for a living, including those who claim to do their jobs for purely altruistic reasons. As much as we may love the work that we do, most of us would not continue to show up to work each day if our employers suddenly declared, "You will no longer receive a pay check every two weeks. Instead, we will repay you with compassion, compliments, gratitude and appreciation for a job well done."
To be perfectly frank, compassion does not pay the rent, gratitude will not fill the fridge with food, and caring will not prevent the utilities from being disconnected for lack of timely payment. The truth is that we all need appropriate compensation for the vital services that we render, so I wonder about the occasional person who states, "I love nursing so much that I'd do it for free!" I challenge these people to resign from their paying jobs and volunteer their nursing services for free for the remainder of their working years. Only the well-off can pull it off for an extended time.
With that having been said, informal salary surveys can be worth their weight in gold. The salary survey is a tool that benefits nurses because it gleans valuable information:
It makes us more aware of the average rates of pay for others in our profession.
It enables us to be reasonable when pursuing a fair pay rate from a potential employer.
It takes other factors into account, such as geographic variances and differences in specialties.
It regards the fact that salaries can be a tricky topic - some employees would never even dream of disclosing their pay to colleagues, and many organizations have policies in place that prohibit open discussion of wages. In other words, salary can be a very touchy subject.
If you wish to participate in the informal salary survey for 2014, please list the information in the following order:
Geographic location
Pay rate
In which area / specialty do you work?
What type of license do you have (RN or LPN)?
What type of degree and/or certification do you have?
How many years of experience do you have?
Are you full-time, part-time, or casual / per diem / PRN status?
What shift do you work?
Do you receive any shift differential?
Are you a manager or supervisor?
And if you do not want to provide any salary information, that's perfectly fine, too. Thanks!
Some of these pay rates should be against the law.....NO RN should be in the twenties as a base pay rate. It doesn't matter if you are diploma, ADN, BSN etc. The type of responsibility we hold does not equate to being paid less than 30 an hr base pay....and if you are sacrificing nights, weekends, holidays away from loved ones, differentials should push you to minimally late 30's to 40's...
Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
Some of these pay rates should be against the law.....NO RN should be in the twenties as a base pay rate. It doesn't matter if you are diploma, ADN, BSN etc. The type of responsibility we hold does not equate to being paid less than 30 an hr base pay....and if you are sacrificing nights, weekends, holidays away from loved ones, differentials should push you to minimally late 30's to 40's...
Yes even in low cost of living areas.
LOL. . .I went to nursing school in Oklahoma City. In 2014, the University of Oklahoma Medical Center is still paying new RNs less than $20 per hour, regardless of degree earned. Most of the other hospitals in the city are following the same trend.
I was an LVN for 4 years before I earned my RN license. My last LVN position in 2010 had been paying me $27 per hour in Texas. When I earned the RN license, hospitals in the area were offering me between $25 and $27.75 hourly. So for my case, becoming an RN entitled me to earn less money than many of my LVN counterparts. BTW, I didn't accept any of these offers.
Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
Some of these pay rates should be against the law.....NO RN should be in the twenties as a base pay rate. It doesn't matter if you are diploma, ADN, BSN etc. The type of responsibility we hold does not equate to being paid less than 30 an hr base pay....and if you are sacrificing nights, weekends, holidays away from loved ones, differentials should push you to minimally late 30's to 40's...
Yes even in low cost of living areas.
It probably would be close to or in the 30's were it not for the glut of nurses. Exactly why the glut was deliberately created using the false "nursing shortage" propaganda.
Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
It probably would be close to or in the 30's were it not for the glut of nurses. Exactly why the glut was deliberately created using the false "nursing shortage" propaganda.
Yep. If local nursing employment markets are glutted with too many nurses, wages can essentially drop. In addition, nurses can be 'kept in line' due to the glut because if one vocally outspoken nurse is shown the door, there will be 100+ unemployed applicants itching to fill his/her old position.
gcupid
528 Posts
Some of these pay rates should be against the law.....NO RN should be in the twenties as a base pay rate. It doesn't matter if you are diploma, ADN, BSN etc. The type of responsibility we hold does not equate to being paid less than 30 an hr base pay....and if you are sacrificing nights, weekends, holidays away from loved ones, differentials should push you to minimally late 30's to 40's...
Yes even in low cost of living areas.