What school did not prepare me for was how much salary I should expect to get, and how to negotiate it, so I'm here to share my experience with you because salary seems to be a bit of a elusive topic. Nobody wants to talk about how much they make, so it's hard to pin it down.
I have had people offering me and my classmates a range of salaries from over 75K to over 100,000K (over many areas and states). One outlier, a private OB hiring a CNM for the first time, offered me 65K. He had googled it and was sincerely surprised that when I told him it was far too low. After doing some googling myself, I realized that there sites out there that really underrates our pays.
Google "salary cnm" and you are usually led to payscale.com, which uses a special scientific method (sarcasm intended) to rate it unrealistically low.
Go to midwifejobs.com, the official ACNM site, and it's on the FAQ, but they won't commit to giving a range ("widely varies").
So far, I found this site to be most realistic representation of what I am personally seeing.
As far as benefits and hours go, private companies seem to be able to give less, but make you work more. In one private practice, I was to work 5 days a week 8 hours a day, but on 2 of those days, I am also on call 24 hours. In addition, I had to be on call every third weekend. I was quite shocked at how they expect me to physically function that way - that is, if you are up 24 hours, how do go in for another 8 hours of seeing patients?
Then I realized that mostly, the providers sleep in the call rooms until it's time to catch a baby.
In some big hospitals and birth centers, the standard that I have seen are 40 hours - 2x8hours clinics, and 2x12hours. I like that because besides working under more humane conditions, I am able to provide labor support and spend more time with my laboring women when I'm on. Many hospital do have calls.
Bigger places come with bigger benefits, usually, not not necessarily - average 4 wks vacation, 1 wk paid CME, personal days, better healthcare, and Liability Insurance.
I know nothing about women who start their own practices, but that's probably a whole different experience.
So.... I hope that gives some of you a better idea. If anybody can share their experiences, I would love to hear.
