DeRob210

The content you pulled isn't referring to what you think it is. It's referring to online schools when they say non traditional. An example is Excelsior University. The area circled is a requirement in addition to the school requirements. Because Excelsior and similar schools don't have traditional clinicals that require to to do further hours before licensure. I'm aware of this because I was accepted to Excelsior and was about to enroll until I found out I couldn't license unless I found a place to complete the hours. In Texas it's 500 hours. I confirmed all this information with the board and the school. Ultimately I ended up going to a traditional school which I'm in now. What you're looking for doesn't exist! There is challenging the NCLEX without going to RN school. Three are some diploma programs still around in a few states.

These generally seem to be rumors. So many people talk about hearing about it and heard that someone did it. Let's examine the logic though... Why go to RN school if you can just go to LPN and then take the NCLEX after s few years? Why pay the extra tuition when you could instead be making money and get the same result? Doesn't make sense. Obviously the schools are going to be against this because they are going to lose money. They'd lobby any such law out of existence. And I'm saying this as an LPN. I want to be an RN too but I'm going back to school to make that happen!

That's not bad at all especially if you really like you job then it's a great salary.

It sounds like these are people that have zero experience being around LPNs or actually taking a minute to talk to them. LPN is quite far from being just the first semester of RN school. LPN and RN while both are in the nursing field are completely separate jobs. Sure we can work in the same facilities and even do some of the same duties and tasks the jobs aren't the same and LPN school isn't the same as RN school. There are a myriad of reasons why someone would choose to go to LPN school vs RN school and it rarely intelligence. It's life situation more often. There are reasons why people don't go decide to return to school right away to become an RN as well and same thing applies here. To make those kinds of statements is completely uninformed and actually shows more about their unintelligence than it does anything else.

Congratulations. I'm with the VA as well. It's an awesome agency to work for. Great benefits and it pays well.

Live in San Antonio Texas. Making $37/hour at outpatient clinic. I have a part time moonlighting and make $24/hour plus bonuses there. I total out to around $100k to $105k yearly. I'll likely go to $38/39 in 2024. I could also up that $24 to $30 but the case I'm moonlighting on gives a lot of convenience and ability to pick my own schedule and change my schedule to fit my needs. No shortage of opportunity and if you look for the higher paying positions they pay more than the average U.S. salary!

It all depends on if you know the nursing market well and negotiate and advocate for a good salary for yourself. Remember this is a business. The job of HR, recruiters and hiring managers are to get an employee for as low of a cost as possible. It is not their job to ensure that you receive a good salary and good benefits. On the contrary their job is the exact opposite of that. Getting a good salary and benefits package is your job and if you don't do that job well you'll get stuck with low pay, poor benefits and hard work. More nurses need to understand this ideology!

So when they say Right to Work state that doesn't mean you can't have a union. It just means that membership isn't mandatory. Another fact is states like this usually have at will employment meaning an employer can fire you for no reason without prior notice and you can also quit for no reason without notice unless there is a contract stating otherwise. There are ways around these things though!

That isn't exactly correct either. I live in Texas. Whether or not a job has a union isn't determined on a state level. It's determined by the institution/facility. I've had several jobs that have unions here in Texas. As a matter of fact the institution I work for currently has a union and they've bargained for numerous pay raises for the nursing staff. That's what I mean by people use a lot of conjecture. They say things that they've heard or guess at how things work without doing any research. Not necessarily saying that is what you did but either way your information is completely incorrect!

It's difficult to speak on it because everything you said was very vague. That may have or may not have been on purpose. You used terms like district I worked in without naming the district. ICU at a large teaching hospital could be anywhere. Obviously an LPN is going to make less than an RN. If we knew the district and city that information could be looked up. The amount made at the teaching hospital is a bit more difficult to look up because it's likely a private facility. However you can usually get a rough idea from certain websites but not anything exact. The information I quoted is directly from the school district website. The charts are sourced from the district website. The pay scale for nurses are directly from federal agency sites. None of what I posted is conjecture. It's straight from the source information that anyone can look up. I don't mind quoting my salary information because I make an amount that I'm happy with and can be proud of.

I wouldn't go as far as saying guilty. They give us 13 days of paid sick leave yearly. You can carry over around 25 days. It's my right to use it when needed. I do feel bad for my co workers that I know will suffer given that were short staffed even when most people show up. Due to that I minimize the amount that I call in.

I agree with the comment regarding pediatric home health nursing. As an RN you can make quite a good bit of money extra. You can pretty much pick how often you want to work. You don't have to commit to a schedule unless that's what you want. You could just commit to something as little as one Saturday or Sunday per month or one whole weekend per month. In my area an experienced RN should ballpark around $40 to $45 per hour. Don't let them low ball you. These companies bill out at upwards of $65 or more per hour. Every shift they don't fill they are losing the whole $65. They can either give you a fair portion of that $65 or lose the whole $65. Go in negotiating with that mindset. Be willing to walk away if the amount offered isn't fair. Generally speaking, they will offer higher. They would rather lose a bit than to lose the whole $65.

I read quite a few of the posts on the thread. Several of them I am not too certain how accurate what a lot of people are quoting is. To be quite honest a lot of it seems like conjecture and people just talking and making up stats Luckily teachers are government employees. As such their salaries aren't something that needs to be speculated or guessed about. It's public information. Myself likewise am a government employee. My salary can be literally googled by my first and last name. Same is true for most government employees. I pulled the salary data for several different school districts in my city. I then pulled my own salary table. I then pulled the RN salary data for my employer. I attached a table. The salaries at the top are teacher salaries for a few different school districts. Now I am going to go on a generality of what I know from previous experience. Teachers are considered state government employees. I was a state government employee in Texas before. From that experience I know that most state employees are able to retire at 20 years of service. You can stay longer but generally speaking most people don't. So, we are going to look at the 20-year mark for each district: SISD (which was the highest paying): A teacher w/ 20 yrs and a doctorate: $71,936. SAISD: $57,879 @ 20 years. NISD: $64,790 @ 20 years. $1500 added w/ Bachelors, Masters, Doctorate SWISD: $65,172 @ 20 years. Now, we are going to move on to the middle table which shows occupation 0620; Job series for LPN/LVN. So, steps here aren't equal to years' experience exactly: below shows an example of how that works for LVNs. Advancement from...Requires... step 1 to step 252 weeks of creditable service in step 1 step 2 to step 352 weeks of creditable service in step 2 step 3 to step 452 weeks of creditable service in step 3 step 4 to step 5104 weeks of creditable service in step 4 step 5 to step 6104 weeks of creditable service in step 5 step 6 to step 7104 weeks of creditable service in step 6 step 7 to step 8156 weeks of creditable service in step 7 step 8 to step 9156 weeks of creditable service in step 8 step 9 to step 10156 weeks of creditable service in step 9 Thus, an LVN with the same 20 years' service would be at $77,926. (Now of course this is considering that the LVN has done a good job and advocated for themselves and made it to Grade GS-06. Even if they are a 4 or 5. Pay would be $62,481 or 69,904 respectively. This is a base salary. Without OT or differentials. As for myself I am sitting at the $69,934 mark which just went up to $72,032 with the beginning of the year COLA increase. Once I get my next step increase in March, I expect it to be around $74,800(just a rough estimate give or take $50 or so) That's more than or at least equal to most teachers in my city with same number of years working. We'll lastly look at the RNs. Now I'm only going to talk about grade 1 and 2. That can be anywhere from $74,242 all the way out to $127,376. This depends on lots of factors. Degree level, certifications, years of experience, and even how well they write their proficiencies for the salary boarding process. It would be quite unusual for an experienced RN with a BSN to not get grade 2 which starts at $95,773. Grades 3,4, and 5 are your nurse managers and higher-level nurse executives. I usually make around $16,000 extra moonlighting which would bring me to around $92,000. Teachers also don't get the entire 3 months off like most people think. They work a while after school is out getting things wrapped up. Administrative things and paperwork. They also come back about a month early for the same reason. They do get Spring break, holiday breaks etc. off. However, the nurse who are government employees get all federal holidays either off or they get holiday pay (which is double pay). We aren't lucky enough to get 2 week and 1 week breaks but we do also get pretty good leave package. I get 20 days off per year. Plus I can carry over 30 if I choose to. I always keep 30 days on the books and just take the 20 I accrue. In addition to that I get 13 days of sick leave. You can carry over unlimited sick leave. I try to carry over at least 25 days of sick leave. RNs are a bit different. They get 26 days of annual leave. Now I'll be honest my pay with my government position is on the lower side. I could make far more in the private sector. I would have to forgo my retirement though. Not a good idea. I seen one post where an RN said her salary even with 15 to 20 hours of OT per week was only around $110k. If I were working the same amount of OT I would end up making $117k. Again I say it is a matter of advocating for yourself. There are jobs in this same city that pay as low as $ 42k. There are also in the $70ks and some in the $80ks. A select few even get into $90ks for LVNs. Unfortunately, some people get into one of these $42k positions and get complacent and never try to grow and improve. I have been the opposite of that. In my first 3 years as an LPN, I worked at over 6 different locations. I took every opportunity to learn and grow. This gave me varied experience and improved my resume. I took each opportunity to make more money. Now I am not saying money is everything, but if you don't go for more money then you aren't ever going to progress in your career to earn more money.

Hello fellow VA employee, Hopefully you signed up for AFGE union membership. Speak with HR first. I wouldn't advise signing anything without a union rep present. If you don't get an appropriate response or resolution from HR then, print out your offer letter and then speak with your union representative. Any salary that was stated in a firm offer letter is binding. If it was a tentative offer letter, then it isn't quite binding. The firm offer letter is akin to a contract and they must keep pay the salary stated. As far as your pay stubs those should have been available via the MyPay website. If you don't have access, you need to ensure you get access to that site and log in once per pay period and reset your password every 150 days. The website will prompt you for that automatically. The information stated above by user jfratian stating "If you don't hit the initial 2-year probation period, your pay isn't set in stone." is incorrect. It is also incorrect when he states that "You could always quit, take a travel contract in your local area, and apply to the VA again to be reevaluated." That is partially correct. You would have to quit for long enough for it to be considered a break in service to have a new salary board. Otherwise, you will be given the same salary again. It sounds like a clerical error to me. A simple talk with HR and your union rep should be able to fix this.

That probably depends on someone individually. I made $99k last year as an LPN. I made $90k the year before. If you accept low then that's exactly what they'll give you!