Salaries

There are alot of topics about this here. Try doing a search for what you are looking for (i.e. florida; salaries). I tried and I got a ton of topics dealing with your question.

You are correct but when I did a search all of the topics were not very specific. Or, they were older threads. I am specifically looking for information on the salaries in Central/Northern Florida. There were several that were for South Florida and that is different then Central/Northern. The few threads for the area of interest were old (2003, 2004) not too many for now. I appreciate your feedback though, thanks.

Have you tried asking around the Florida state specific board? They would have the most up to date info.

is the salary wizard you're going to salary.com? They have a pretty good site imo. They also have a wizard that shows cost of living for different areas.

I can tell you as well as being pretty stingy on salary, the hospitals are pretty cheap as far as sign on bonuses go. For instance the hospital I currently work for pays a moving reimbursement, but this spring was only paying a bonus to experienced CVICU nurses- just started doing open heart and interventional caths. Currently there is nothing as far as I know. I can tell you as well as far as Orlando goes for example there isnt much, again maybe in a specfic specialty or two.

My reccommendation would be to take a travel assignment or two. Also there is a big difference between central and North FLorida. Tampa, Orlando, Melbourne is considered central. Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Pensecola would be considered North. Of the least is climate. I did a travel assignment in Tallahassee and it gets chilly- ie had to scrape car windows several times from Jan-Apr during assignment there. In Tampa/Orlando area only one time in that same time span.

For what its worth salary.com is pretty close for what my hospital pays.

Rj

Forget Florida! Come to the SF Bay area where new grads make nearly $40.00/ hour on the DAY shift and with time and experience can get up to $60.00/hour on DAYS! PM's usually gets 10% more per hour and nights 20% more. That is for benifited positions with sick leave paid vacation etc. Staff nurse 3 gets another 10% and there are weekend differentials, charge differentials, preceptor differentials and stuff like that. AND in the ICU, a nurse can ONLY have 2 patients, and other parts of the hospitals have caps on how many patients an RN can look after also. This is all largely because the California Nurses Association (Union) has worked to make nursing a real job with real financial and other incentives.

The only hard part about the Bay Area is that housing is REALLY pricy. Other than that, food costs about the same, gas and utilities are the same. Plus, only an occasional earthquake, no regular hurricaines.:wink2: