Wage difference between working in nursing agency vs staff nurse in Ontario

Fiona59 · Jul 6, 2019

Are you from the UK?

Ontario healthcare is a disaster zone right now. Government slashing everything.

In my province, hospitals do not hire outside staff to work units. There are hospital float pools to cover empty shifts. The pay is the same. The feeling is a surgery nurse is a surgery nurse and should be able to work a similar unit without too much difficulty.

Agencies are for home assistance and are usually used by families for geriatric, paediatric cass who don’t require inpatient care but need some skilled nursing. He pay is usually lower.

GBC_Student, BSN, RN · Jul 7, 2019

It depends on the agency. I work in a Toronto hospital and the agency we have come in apparently makes $25-30 for an rpn and $35-39 for an rn. We have an internal nursing resource team but still use agency nurses in a pinch. At my hospital they will send agency nurses to our unit for orientation shifts before they start coming for regular shifts, but if they have a nurse who isn't trained on our unit and we have no one else we'll take whoever we can get whether they've orientated or not.

Fiona59 · Jul 7, 2019

1 hour ago, GBC_Student said:
It depends on the agency. I work in a Toronto hospital and the agency we have come in apparently makes $25-30 for an rpn and $35-39 for an rn. We have an internal nursing resource team but still use agency nurses in a pinch. At my hospital they will send agency nurses to our unit for orientation shifts before they start coming for regular shifts, but if they have a nurse who isn't trained on our unit and we have no one else we'll take whoever we can get whether they've orientated or not.

I guess your hospital is non-union?

Our hospitals are all union and this would never fly. Maybe if the family paid privately to an agency for one on one care, I've heard of it but never witnessed it.

Our health authority goes by the principle of a surgical nurse is a surgical nurse. If you are floated to a short staffed unit, you are given the lighter cases. A Women's Health nurse would never be floated to General Surgery.

Our Float Pool relief staff are orientated to at least three units on a service. Some Floats I've met have trained on Medicine and Surgery Units. There are actually full-time Floats that exist to cover booked vacation, sick leaves, etc.

GBC_Student, BSN, RN · Jul 7, 2019

Nope we're unionized. But our nursing resource team can't always keep up with demand which is when we go to an outside agency.

dayandnight · Jul 8, 2019

9 hours ago, Fiona59 said:
I guess your hospital is non-union?
Our hospitals are all union and this would never fly. Maybe if the family paid privately to an agency for one on one care, I've heard of it but never witnessed it.
Our health authority goes by the principle of a surgical nurse is a surgical nurse. If you are floated to a short staffed unit, you are given the lighter cases. A Women's Health nurse would never be floated to General Surgery.
Our Float Pool relief staff are orientated to at least three units on a service. Some Floats I've met have trained on Medicine and Surgery Units. There are actually full-time Floats that exist to cover booked vacation, sick leaves, etc.

Unionized does not matter. Not all hospitals have float pools (I worked in 2 hospitals that didn’t- one used to but got rid of it) and there are real nursing shortages especially in er or icu in small hospitals and rural areas. There is a certain limit as to how short a unit can work before the hospital resorts to hiring agency nurses. I only saw agency nurses for those two units in BC though. Also keep in mind healthcare situation is very different depending on what area you live in Canada. I have RN friends in Edmonton, Toronto and Halifax and all the stories they tell me are very different than my experience.

bradons · Aug 3, 2019

Just west of Ontario most agency nurses make 10 more an hour.

But remember majority don't have benefits.