Emagehtmai

My raise the last two years has been 1% each year. I did get a raise of roughly $1.20 when I went from Clin Nurse II to Clin Nurse III. But that'll be the only time that happens. In nursing, you have to job hop to get raises. A friend of mine here who only has about 2 uears experience and makes about $2/hr less than me will be starting at an ICU at a different hospital and getting a $5/hr raise (we work a med-surge floor right now). I've been at my current job for 2.5 years and will probably be here maybe another year or two and start looking again. In my 2.5 years here I've had a total of $1.46 in raises.

I've never heard that B and C nurses do better on the floor. What I have heard is that know-it-all types do worse on the floor when they realize that no, they DON'T know it all, compared to people who come into nursing with the mindset of knowing what they don't know (which, when you're fresh out of nursing school, is just about everything). Many of those with know-it-all attitudes are the ones with the straight-A's. But I've seen B students also have this attitude, so who knows? Focus on what's important - taking care of the patient. If you don't know something, ASK. Don't let pride get in the way - you know how many times I've been 99.9% certain of something only to be proven wrong about it later? Had I not asked, I could have possibly caused a patient harm. Apologies for getting a little off topic, but I felt it to be relevant.

Makes me think of the patient I had recently who had been getting Dilaudid for "side pain" (actual admitting diagnosis was PNA/COPD exacerbation). CT, Xray, and Ultrasound were all negative. Physician informs patient that pain is almost certainly pleuritic in nature and they would be DC'ing the Dilaudid, and she would have to just manage with her (very large) dose of home Percocet and Opana. She IMMEDIATELY says "So I can go home, right?" Physician tells her no, she still has Pneumonia and is still getting nebs Q4 while awake along with 3 different antibiotics and hi-dose solumedrol and that she needs to be in the hospital for that. "But if you're not going to treat my pain, why can't I go home?" "Because the pleural pain will go away on its own as the pneumonia resolves. You've had Dilaudid for several days now, the pleurisy should be resolving soon, and we are weaning you back to your home meds. You still have pneumonia, and if we don't treat that, it WILL kill you. Pain will not." Needless to say, the patient was not happy. I just find it funny (in a sad way) that she didn't care that she had pneumonia, and that it could kill her. She just wanted pain meds.

It's the same at my facility - we have "Clin Nurse I/II/III", which determines your pay scale (new grads are I, RNs with 2-5 years experience are II, and over 5 yrs experience is clin nurse 3), and then various raises after that also based on your experience (5-7 years, 8-10 years, 11-15, etc). But this is for new hires only. For existing employees, you do get raises when you go from I to a II, or II to a III. But once you hit Clin nurse III, you get yearly raises after that and nothing more. So once you, for example, go from 7 years experience to 8 years, you will only get your annual 1% raise. But if someone from outside the company with the exact same experience level comes in with 8 years experience, they will make more than you. And that sucks. Edit: Just realized the last post in this topic was September of last year. Sorry for bringing an old thread back to life; it showed up in my news feed on Facebook via a nursing page that linked to it.