How did you get the big pay raise?

Pay raises come with changing jobs. For ideal salary, you should consider changing employers every 2-3 years.

I recently got a significant increase (almost $6/hr) for years of critical care experience.

I changed health systems. They were far enough apart (but the same drive time from my house) that there was a big difference in base pay.

So don't get me wrong, I certainly am not a nurse for the money. I love bedside nursing and I chose this career because I love it.

I have been a nurse on the same unit for 2.5 years and make just a little more than I did when I began as a nurse in my facility and was wondering when things "broke" for you, like when did you get your first big pay raise or your first job that payed more than your starting salary? When were you promoted within your hospital? Within bedside nursing, I feel like there isn't much career mobility and was wondering when others "caught their break"?

As a new grad, I got my first significant raise when I made it to "Nurse II" after two years. At my second job, I was able to negotiate a yearly raise five times bigger than what my coworkers got. I think it was a combination of catching my manager at the right time and being being in a very confident mood myself. I wasn't even planning on asking for anything. It was a whim.

Job hopping does seem the way to go in most cases. It seems like the nurses who stay in one place the longest are often the lowest paid.

Ideally, job hop to a hospital that offers incentives for self development while you are at it :)

For instance, my current employer offers pay incentives for BSN (1.8% raise over ADN/diploma), certification in an applicable specialty (3%), and clinical ladder (3% and 4%) for steps 2 and 3 respectively. At the top of the pay scale, the nurses who pursue certification and are at tier 3 of the ladder are making about $10 k more per year.

Each pay raise in the past had been negotiated by my union and we all get the same raise percentage wise.

This may sound bad of me but if you find a facility desperate enough and if you have good experience you can usually negotiate a very good salary. I moved to a new area (husbands job transfer) and threw my resume at a few hospitals. One unit I'd applied for had recently had three nurses unexpectedly quit. They needed a body. I haggled with them on pay and came out with my desired salary. Don't be afraid to ask up front. The worse they can tell you is no.

I changed jobs.

The year that I resigned my hospital job, I made approximately $20K more than I did the year before. Of course, that amount did involve a very large PTO payout from my hospital job and I had worked 16 hrs/week per diem for the last 2 months of my hospital job at another job, which helped and I worked 2 jobs for the remainder of that year.

My biggest salary (for one job) increase was $15K/year and that came from leaving one job for another. My most recent change, I increased my salary by about $4000/year. That's more than my salary increased in 3 years at the job that I left.