Nursing requires a 2 year's associate degree which can be earned at many community colleges for a relatively small amount of tuition, hence the barrier to entry is quite low. Given the low barrier to entry, physicians and physicians-in-training, such as Taurus, would expect nurses to have relatively low rates of pay.
The reason for the high rate of pay for nurses is:
1) monopoly power through unionization
2) high burnout rate
The latter is self-explanatory, nursing is no cakewalk, but for the former: California nurses are largely unionized, they have a monopoly on manpower for the hospitals, which are closed shops, and have been for decades. Nursing wages are much lower ($20 an hour) in states where unions are illegal, e.g. North Carolina, or where the nursing union is in bed with hospital management, e.g. Oregon. Nurse monopoly power lets them extract wages from hospitals that are way above equilibrium market rates.
So...nurses control salary using monopoly power via unionization, physicians control salary using monopoly power on medical school spots and the mix of residency spots.
This sort of monopoly game is not uncommon, plumbers, electricians, dentists, and physicians use a different method of monopoly: limiting the supply of the workforce. Plumbers limit the number of licenses available, that's why your local licensed plumber earns $80-$120 per hour. Electricians limit the number of trainee and license spots, that's why your electrician earns $90 an hour. Neither of these positions requires ANY college.
Then there are physicians... physicians limit the supply of medical school spots and then the mix of specialty positions, supposedly to maximize the quality of the service provider, however the supply of medical school spots and residency spots seems to remain constant irrespective of the size and quality of the applicant pool, the spots are actually limited in order to prop up salaries, which are the highest in the world. The physician method worked wonderfully until the explosion of the HMO's in the 1980's, it seems that the physician method is woefully ineffective in dealing with HMO's.
On the other hand, nurses using the unionization method of monopoly lost no ground with the explosion of HMO's in the 1980's, after all unionization methods had been used for decades and were effective against Kaiser Permanente in California, and Kaiser Permanente was the model for the HMO act of 1973 (most HMO's mimic Kaiser).
Unfortunately, physicians cannot unionize for two reasons
1) because they are considered supervisors.
2) during nursing strikes nursing duties are dropped onto the laps of physicians (since they are non-unionized, no strike breaking clause), however during physician strikes, who would cover physician duties? if docs were manufacturing widgets, this wouldn't be an issue, but since it's lives at stake and docs have all taken the hippocratic oath, there is just no way doctors can strike