brejean

I wish I could tell you that the scale was higher, but as with alot of other nursing specialities...it's not. I work in an Illinois male prison as a LPN. I have been there going on 9 years. The starting wage for a LPN is $9.50 an hour. Alot of Illinois prisons healthcare units are contracted, usually from out of state contractors who have very little knowledge (or care) of what we do on a daily basis. We recently became unionized, but wages won't change until 2001. I just made it over the $11.00 mark. You would think that with the type of clientel that we deal with on a daily basis, we would be worth just a "little" bit more than $9.50...especially when a CNA in our area makes more in starting wage than I do right now...with over 20 years of nursing experience. It's really too bad too, because I love the fact that this field is a combination of many, many specialities of nursing.