Please, share. What exactly is the "misguided musing"?I believe the "data" is in reference to this post:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=12096485&postcount=278
Perhaps my understanding is incorrect. Enlighten me. I'm all ears.
Future nursing administrator! Thanks for the promotion, but let me finish my classes first.
I feel extremely well-suited to do what any CA RN does.
Nursing is expedient (2yr degree). You don't even need a bachelors, and it's more financially secure than an MBA, J.D., or EE. Not only that, the hours, OT (which doesn't exist in any of those professions), and lack of business travel make it a much sweeter deal.
Compared to nursing, I don't consider my job loss a failure, I consider having not discovered and entered the nursing profession earlier the failure. Where else can you have a protected job, no travel, and make six figures with just an Associate Degree?
By the way, all I hear out of those attending nursing school right now, is how much they all talk about the money aspect (I'm told a certain Northern California hospital is now paying $76 an hour)
Lets review shall we?
Consider this, 1st year nurses in Northern CA make $100k+. That's an RN with an ASN (2yr degree) or BSN (4yr degree).
Compare to the World's Top MBA programs: http://officialmbaguide.org/top40.php?rnk=salary [4yr college + 2yr MBA]
Compare to starting salaries for Engineers: http://www.eng.lsu.edu/news/2009/7/e...ational-survey and http://www.payscale.com/best-college...g-colleges.asp [4yrs college though usually takes 5-6 to complete]
Compare to starting salaries for Lawyers: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_b...al-jurist.html [4yrs college + 3yrs JD]
It's no wonder the ABSN program around here have a pipeline of MBAs, lawyers and engineers! Lets see, a 2yr associates at a community college or 5-8 years of college and grad school... hmm, tough choice.
Top that off with patient to nurse ratio (I love it!!!) I'm sure many MBAs, JDs and EEs wish they had a ratio or OT or no travel or even a 3-4 day workweek!
"In 1999, they persuaded the state Legislature to pass a first-in-the-nation law setting nurse-to-patient ratios: the maximum number of patients assigned to a licensed nurse at any one time.
The staffing ratios, implemented in 2004, range from one nurse for every patient in a trauma unit, to one nurse for every four patients in a specialty-care unit."
"It's a huge cost for hospitals," Spetz said, estimating about one-sixth of a hospital's total budget goes toward compensation of registered nurses, licensed vocational nurses and nurses aides.
Highest nursing pay in U.S.
For many CNA members, there's a more potent measure of the union's success: Nursing pay, already higher in California than anywhere else, is rising fast.
The average salary for a California registered nurse grew from $57,855 in 2001 to $88,714 in 2011, according to the state Employment Development Department. Adjusted for inflation, that represents a 21 percent pay hike, compared with an 8 percent pay bump for other California workers during that span.
At the current pace, the average salary for a California registered nurse will eclipse six figures in three years.
The arguments, the walkouts, the pay increases all are likely to continue as long as demand for nurses remains strong. In 2010, as the state buckled under 12 percent unemployment, the jobless rate among nurses was 1.8 percent, census figures show.
"We're still seeing demand," said Terri Carpenter, the agency's spokeswoman. "But we can only train so many a year. There's only so much space at the colleges."
If so, feel free to contact the newspaper that did the fact checking and published the article from which I cut/pasted.
- Do Northern California nurses not have the highest nursing pay in the U.S.?
- Are those average salary figures not correct?
- Is the nurse unemployment rate wrong?
We're not talking about the exception to the rule. When hospitals hire new RNs, do they not get paid the same or does a BSN make more than an ASN? And if an RN has 5 yrs experience, do they not get paid comparably to an RN that has 5yrs of experience? As I understand it, it's not a pay for performance model.
That's the point though. An RN with an ASN does make that kind of money. They make the same. Unlike MBAs, JDs, EEs and countless other professions where new grads (usually with a 4yr Bachelor and professional degree) do not get paid the same as their peers, and certainly do not get paid the same as their more educated peers even though they may be doing the same job (there are exceptions, but that's the general rule).
You'll also find that a Harvard or Stanford MBA will get paid more than an MBA that attended a lesser school. That's also true with JDs and EEs. An MIT grad is better paid than an EE from a Tier 2 or 3 school. That is reflective of the market supply / demand. How does that compare with nursing? Is an ASN RN from a better school paid more? How about a BSN RN from a better school?
How about the teachers training and educating the very RNs we're talking about? At the BSN programs around here, the teachers (who are highly educated RNs) make less than if they worked as an RN.
Why shouldn't an RN teacher make more given their nursing experience and education?
That's an excellent question! Why should an EE with just a bachelors make less than an MSEE? Why should a business major (BBA) make less than an MBA? Why should a JD make less than an someone who has a master's in law?
They know less, that's why. Which raises the question, does an ASN know less than a BSN? After all, they take the same NCLEX, receive the same training (at least that's what the professors in the BSN program keep telling the students). They receive the same pay. So what exactly is the difference?
Someone with an associates in engineering certainly does not have the same education as bachelor level.
While on the topic, I have the 8th Ed. Med-Surg Nursing by Lewis et. al., 7th Ed. Clinical Nursing Skills & Techniques by Perry & Potter, 7th Ed. Fundamentals of Nursing, ATI's series - RN Adult Med Surg Nursing 8th Ed., and about 15 other RN books including NCLEX (as I may have mentioned previously, I like to read ahead
It's no wonder kids today avoid the STEM disciplines. Why bother even getting a bachelor or a masters in most other disciplines when an ASN alone will make you more bank?
Fab, you're in the wrong place! Come to CA (stay away from the major cities - L.A. & S.F.) and you too could see more pay for less work (whatever you do avoid NYC).
And around here you'll run into former MBAs, JDs, EEs, etc. all now in healthcare and loving the lifestyle! Can't wait for that first 4 day weekend as a "regular workweek"
firecloud..... all a guy can do is do his best to soak up all the info that he can based on what he finds on the web, and gleans from converstations with his friends... and thats what you are doing. i dont doubt that california is where the nursing gold rush is, and i have some friends down there doing just that. go ahead and lay a list of citations at the feet of your supervisors when you are an RN, and explain to them that they have no standing when they pay you less than what you've read, or when they assign you more patients than the quota. see how well your techniques work when you are dealing with a noncompliant patient. i think that your "this is how it is because ive read it" attitude is the most prominent impression ive gleaned from your posts. you keep saying things like "its only a matter of time before technology replaces nurses", but youve never dealt with a high maintenance one. you insist that 3 shifts a week will be a cakewalk compared to the endless hours of a computer science job. you are very self assured to the point of naivete. most of us in healthcare know that the best laid plans are often turned back around on us, and the folks like you that stand there saying "this shouldnt have happened.... its not supposed to work like this" are some of the most difficult people to be around from that point on. they are the ones that dont adapt, and are disillusioned. i have no doubt that you can get into nursing school, get through it with good grades. i guesse if i have a point to make, its that you dont know much about how things go in healthcare, yet you present yourself as an expert on it. i guesse if you are comfortable droning on about how things are supposed to be because you read it in an article written by someone paid by the line to come up with content, then far be it from me to try to correct you on every point. what i can say is that in my associates degree RN class, we are graduating into an environment where wages arent nearly what california has, and the job market isnt nearly as tight, and over half the class isnt going to get work. those of us that do will be the ones with jobs in facilities already, and our facilities will be demanding that we get our bachelor's to keep working there because thats the prevailing trend.when we do get work, it wont be for wages that are what we read they would be on the BLS website, or on glassdoordotcom.
