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!
