Average RN salary = 80k

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Darth Doc said:
Looks more like the nurses are reporting the salaries they wish they had. The only nurses I know who make that much are doing shift work, ICU work, locum tenens, or work more than 40 hours a week. It's also probably not adjusted for nurses who work "on-call" only and are reporting the salaries they'd get if they worked full-time. In the mid-Atlantic region where the average is "77,000", the nurses make $60,000/yr on average.

It's like the numbers Medscape puts up for MDs - only ours read on the low side.
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do you have lots of nurse friends that tell you their salary?
 
Darth Doc said:
Looks more like the nurses are reporting the salaries they wish they had. The only nurses I know who make that much are doing shift work, ICU work, locum tenens, or work more than 40 hours a week. It's also probably not adjusted for nurses who work "on-call" only and are reporting the salaries they'd get if they worked full-time. In the mid-Atlantic region where the average is "77,000", the nurses make $60,000/yr on average.

It's like the numbers Medscape puts up for MDs - only ours read on the low side.
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Well, the majority of nurses do "shift work". Most hospitals don't pay ICU RNs more than other types (salary is usually based on years experience, having a BSN as opposed to an associates, and additional certifications). As someone mentioned, the salary could be affected by markets with high RN salaries (and usually high cost of living to go along with it). I live in NYC, and most hospitals will start a new graduate RN at $84K+ (my hospital starts them, on night shift, at $90K). On the west coast, I believe UCSF starts new grad RNs at $100K (UC has all their salaries online, this is what I'm vaguely remembering though).
 
According the the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for a nurse is $67490 per year, $32.45 per hour. To reach the median salary at that hourly wage requires 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.

I think nurses deserve it. They do a lot of work and put up with tons of BS. I also think teachers are underpaid.
 
ProfMD said:
According the the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for a nurse is $67490 per year, $32.45 per hour. To reach the median salary at that hourly wage requires 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.

I think nurses deserve it. They do a lot of work and put up with tons of BS. I also think teachers are underpaid.
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NYCGuy86 said:
Funny you say that, I was reading a thread over on allnurses about whether ICU nurses should make more than med/surg nurses:

http://allnurses.com/micu-sicu-nursing/should-icu-get-915502.html
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I was actually hesitant to put things in that order for that reason. ICU nurses rarely have more than 2 patients, but beds on their floor rake in the most money for the hospital and kind of implicit in taking care of more acutely ill patients is higher pay, even though that doesn't necessarily always translate into a more difficult work day.
 
80k is too high. It's more like 60-70k depending on where you live. Its also hard to get an increase in salary unless you move to a unionized hospital or somewhere in cali or NY. Nowadays new grads get paid as much as an experience rns.

3 12 hr shift is a nice gig. Albeit stressful. And yes there are a lot of lazy RNs out there.
 
psychMDhopefully said:
Its a lot for what they do, they make 2.5 x what teachers make and teachers work 50-70 hrs a week. The only reason they are paid so much is because everything and everyone in health care is overpaid. And how many big pharm CEOs are there compared to nurses? 1: 1000000? Dude you are comparing apples to oranges on that front. Bernie really brainwashed the country with the who "big pharma and CEOs" crap, glad hes out of the race
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We should also mention that teachers work 9 months of the year.
 
ProfMD said:
True, but they may be including residents and fellows. They list entry level requirements as a doctoral degree and residency as "on the job training."
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Actually I looked at it again, I guess anything up to 187k is what the BLS reports, there is a table in the pay section that shows actual physician salaries and its pretty spot on, general surgeon~395k. Isnt that a bit high for gen surg?
 
NYCGuy86 said:
"shift work".
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I meant shift differential. At least where I worked (and where my spouse works) there is shift differential for nurses working less desirable hours.

The ICU nurses I talked to when I worked in the hospital said they wouldn't leave for another floor because their pay would drop significantly. Perhaps that hospital is unique.

I do agree with you that the number of years you've been in a position does matter.
 
psychMDhopefully said:
I could see getting rid of professors on the professional school level, the students are usually mature and responsible enough to do the work. K-12 schools in this country are honestly a baby sitting service, unless you want to take your 9 year old to work with you or leave your 15 year old daughter alone at home to " do her school work." If you choose to round up all the kids, put them in a place, and let a virtual teacher teach them, then you would still need a proctor and thats just like the schools we have now. College is iffy, most classes could be totally online, but then college isnt just about book learning, its a buffer zone between childhood and adulthood where kids learn how to adjust to being independent and decide what philosophy of life they want to live by. Not to mention K-University teaches us social skills we use in life, home schooled kids are usually awkward, not all of them, but most.

Edit: College also has girls and parties and stuff
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I'd say more like K-6/8. If a kid's in high school and needs a consistent babysitter the parents F***ed up somewhere along the line.
 
Nursing in general is an interesting developmental cycle. The most whinny, stuck up, narcissistic, Holier than thou mentality students on the planet are obviously 95% of premeds, but a close second would be without a doubt 100% of nursing students. Then, once they become actual Nurses, they are some of the literally best people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Nurses deserve every single cent they earn.
 
psychMDhopefully said:
I could see getting rid of professors on the professional school level, the students are usually mature and responsible enough to do the work. K-12 schools in this country are honestly a baby sitting service, unless you want to take your 9 year old to work with you or leave your 15 year old daughter alone at home to " do her school work." If you choose to round up all the kids, put them in a place, and let a virtual teacher teach them, then you would still need a proctor and thats just like the schools we have now. College is iffy, most classes could be totally online, but then college isnt just about book learning, its a buffer zone between childhood and adulthood where kids learn how to adjust to being independent and decide what philosophy of life they want to live by. Not to mention K-University teaches us social skills we use in life, home schooled kids are usually awkward, not all of them, but most.

Edit: College also has girls and parties and stuff
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I don't know. Doesn't seem like the cost of that "buffer" is really worth it for the vast majority of AMerican kids. I think we have just got to get over the big lie that everyone needs to go to college and that education is a ticket to the middle class. In most cases, "higher" education is a ticket to decades of crippling debt for a worthless degree.

But yeah that was a digression. I'm just saying, with how much "education" costs in this country, I think we could greatly trim the fat (fire the vast majority of school administrators first). Then you could essentially hire a specially trained babysitter to watch kids while they do their e-lessons.

I don't agree that most homeschooled kids are awkward. Most homeschooled kids actually are 100x better educated than the plebs who are forced into the government schools.
 
Bancrofti said:
Seems a bit high, but not too much. I have no problem with it. BSNs are college grads w/ 4 years of post-high school education at the least typically. The good ones make a big difference in patient care and the great ones can save a residents ass a time or two and are confident enough dealing with simple issues to not page you every 5 minutes while you're on call.

Granted, there are some terrible ones, especially newer nurses. Typically their pay grade isn't as high initially and increases with years of experience and is also dependent on area of the country they work in. I'd imagine a new BSN starting salary would be somewhere around low 60s working full time

There should be more regulation though. A post-op nurse shouldn't make as much as a nurse on a surgical floor where patients are ****ting and bursting ostomy bags open every half an hour, who shouldn't make as much as an ICU nurse. Some nurses literally do nothing but give meds, chart that they gave meds, and start IVs. Those people shouldn't be making even 60. But the ones who are on their feet nonstop, active with patients, especially those with significant morbidity, they deserve to make 80+
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Post high school education where they are still able to work part or full time...
 
Crayola227 said:
document a ton of stuff that doesn't matter
a ton of stuff that does (like vitals)
deal with all patient buzzes/questions/concerns/demands/assaults
dress, sponge bathe, and clean up urinary and fecal incontinence messes (imagine Dr. Suess Cat in the Hat.... but it's not pink frosting)
poke patients to start IVs (there's a job I'm glad I don't do.... only have to do FIVE in all of residency for IM cert..... so why the **** is the floor nurse grabbing me when she can't start the IV??), other minor procedures like inserting/removing Foley catheters
applying restraints
redirect demented/delerious patients
carry out MD orders
convince patients to take the meds the MD ordered (this is a VERY taxing skill)
assessing patient skin integrity and turning them to avoid bedsores
basic wound care

the list goes on, just the sucky jobs I know they do daily I'm glad I don't have to do that came to mind

if there's no surgery and hands are going on the patient in the hospital, it's usually a nurse
they are the ones that have to put their back into it
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And there are nurses aides etc as well. .. don't forget that
 
This is the interesting thing about how a free market works. Thanks fully people like us don't just get to sit around and say: "hey, you make too much" and then cut their salary." That would be ineffective to say the least. But, people who actually run businesses have decided that rn's are that valuable to pay them 80k (it sounds like this number is in question, but insert whatever number they actually get paid). Why is anyone on this forum remotely qualified to say "oh that's too much." If you think it is too much, then start a business that hires rns and pay them or offer to pay them what you think is fair. Us on this forum saying "they are paid too much, their wages should be cut" are no different than all those people in comment section of Forbes articles or New York time articles about physicians salaries saying that physicians should be paid less.


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Edit: sorry for any typos. My phone goes hard with the autocorrect
 
goodlord123 said:
This is the interesting thing about how a free market works. Thanks fully people like us don't just get to sit around and say: "hey, you make too much" and then cut their salary." That would be ineffective to say the least. But, people who actually run businesses have decided that rn's are that valuable to pay them 80k (it sounds like this number is in question, but insert whatever number they actually get paid). Why is anyone on this forum remotely qualified to say "oh that's too much." If you think it is too much, then start a business that hires rns and pay them or offer to pay them what you think is fair. Us on this forum saying "they are paid too much, their wages should be cut" are no different than all those people in comment section of Forbes articles or New York time articles about physicians salaries saying that physicians should be paid less.


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Edit: sorry for any typos. My phone goes hard with the autocorrect
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"Free market" is a complete myth. There is a free market in health care like there is justice in the legal system.

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psychMDhopefully said:
http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/public/nurse-salary-report-2015


Sorry, but that is way too much for what they do. If the government wants to cut salaries, start there.
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Trust me it's not worth the money. There is no amount you could pay me to ever work the floor again. I worked two years and got out. Most of the nurses I know took a significant pay cut to get the heck out of there. There is a very high turnover in nursing for a reason.

To Chillaxbro, the pre-health advisor, I live in a city where most everyone is morbidly obese. I worked on a stroke unit, so we had a lot of paralyzed patients. I am 5'5" and 130 pounds. Any ideas on how I could have turned a 400lb+ patient who was dead weight? Even when I could corral enough CNAs and other nurses, there were still many times where we couldn't physically do it. I had one resident who was complaining about us not turning a patient (that we physically couldn't turn), so the next time the resident came by we said, "Oh, good glad you're here, we need your help." With his help, we still couldn't turn the patient. That's the last I heard I heard him complain about us not turning patients. Every single nurse on the stroke unit was out at one time or another for a back injury or a shoulder injury from trying to turn patients who were obese.
 
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Based on the numbers reported for my region that data is inflated and is about as accurate as the medscape physician salary reports. You also have to factor in COL for different parts of the country. The nurses making $60k+ (...again factor in COL...) are likely doing inpatient shift work (clinic jobs pay quite a bit less) and constantly picking-up evening and overnight shifts - the shift differentials, overtime pay, and incentive pay adds up quick. There are also office jobs that require nursing degrees which pay more than floor work; my wife went from inpatient nursing to reviewing Medicare claims which increased her income over $20k. Also, as with any profession there are people who do an outstanding job and people who are absolutely worthless, with a whole spectrum in between. Nurses aren't immune to this, teachers aren't immune to this, physicians aren't immune to this...
 
HIPAAHasOneP said:
I live in a city where most everyone is morbidly obese. I worked on a stroke unit, so we had a lot of paralyzed patients. I am 5'5" and 130 pounds. Any ideas on how I could have turned a 400lb+ patient who was dead weight?
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I know a number of nurses who've had herniated discs or worse from attempting to turn morbidly obese patients. It's hard enough to turn a patient with a BMI of 25 who is 2x your size.

On the topic of paralyzed overweight persons, they can't eat food due to swallowing hazards, so they get put on tube feeding which is calculated based on their weight, and they end up gaining more weight, having loose stool, etc... I've legitimately always wondered why a weight loss regiment wasn't calculated into the tube feeding for morbidly obese patients. (Maybe it is?)
 
cbrons said:
"Free market" is a complete myth. There is a free market in health care like there is justice in the legal system.

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Not saying the market is completely free. For doctors, due to insurance and regulations - totally agree it is much more complicated. But I think most rns are salaried employees which means they get paid a flat salary or per hour. Which means the employees, (hospital, private practice doc etc.) decides that an rn is worth 80k. No one mandates artificially that the rn needs to be paid 80k, employers decide this. If we don't think they are worth that, start a private practice and try and employ rns for less and see if you have takers.


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goodlord123 said:
Not saying the market is completely free. For doctors, due to insurance and regulations - totally agree it is much more complicated. But I think most rns are salaried employees which means they get paid a flat salary or per hour. Which means the employees, (hospital, private practice doc etc.) decides that an rn is worth 80k. No one mandates artificially that the rn needs to be paid 80k, employers decide this. If we don't think they are worth that, start a private practice and try and employ rns for less and see if you have takers.


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The vast majority of inpatient RNs are paid hourly, not salary.
 
Walter Lance said:
The vast majority of inpatient RNs are paid hourly, not salary.
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Ok perfect. Then as an employer, we can decide that rns should be paid x amount of dollars per hour. That hourly wage isn't just universally mandated. Employers say how much they are willing to pay per hour based upon the value they hope to get from the rn and then the rn can either decide to accept that number, ask for more, or not accept the job.


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Walter Lance said:
The vast majority of inpatient RNs are paid hourly, not salary.
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Correct! Many new RN grad in my area are offered somewhere in the low $30's. Shift requires you to work 7 days/ 12 hr shifts, anything beyond 8 hrs is a time and a half, and beyond 12 hrs is double time. This is not including night and weekend differential. So that'll put you in the mid $70k range as a brand new RN.
 
Yeah, nursing is so awesome. You get to eat s)!+ from patients, doctors, and administrators all day while listening to docs and admins trying to find a way to work you even further into the ground.

There's always active threads on nurses trying to go to medical school. I don't understand why if being a nurse is so freakin great.


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Ho0v-man said:
Yeah, nursing is so awesome. You get to eat s)!+ from patients, doctors, and administrators all day while listening to docs and admins trying to find a way to work you even further into the ground.

There's always active threads on nurses trying to go to medical school. I don't understand why if being a nurse is so freakin great.


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Perhaps some of us find the profession not rewarding enough. Regardless of what profession you are in, you're in it for the same reason.
 
NoTownPreMed said:
Perhaps some of us find the profession not rewarding enough. Regardless of what profession you are in, you're in it for the same reason.
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That was sarcasm. Don't we actually have a surplus of nurses and the job just sucks so much people do other stuff if they can avoid it?


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I've made 80k a year as a nurse... working 60+ hour weeks every week and taking tons of call. My base salary was just 46k/yr, if I'd just worked the minimum 36-40 hours.

A lot depends on region and specialty. OR nurses with the right mix of experience can do travel assignments and pull down $80-100k easy. Med/surg and home care nurses are probably in the 40-50 range in most of the country.

California pays well, but cost of living is high. Here in Erie, when I quoted my typical rates to a potential employer, she laughed in my face and said that she, as the Director of Nursing at that facility, wasn't making that much. But, you can rent a nice 3 bedroom house in a safe neighborhood for $800/month, so it makes sense that salaries don't need to be as high here.

As for whether nurses deserve to be paid well for what they do... I'd counter that anyone who argues otherwise doesn't have a real grasp of exactly what it is that nurses do. It is hard to get people to be willing to do the often nasty and underappreciated work of nursing. The salaries raise to the point that they need to in order to fill positions. If I can make as much money doing a job where no one is yelling at me, no one is puking on me, and no one's life is in my hands, that is going to look really appealing.

This leads into one of my favorite rants: There really is no nursing shortage. There is often a shortage of nurses willing to work under the conditions they are presented with for the pay that they are offered. There are twice as many licensed RNs as there are people working as RNs. Most of them keep up their license, but go to work in other fields. In some places, delivering pizza can pay better, hour for hour, than med/surg nursing. When other jobs get scarce, those folks come back to nursing and there is briefly an excess of nurses. Then, when the economy improves a bit, people start peeling away to other industries again.

Back to the point. I strongly disbelieve that 80k is the national average for RNs. That sounds like the high end of the average range, not the midpoint. But no one is paying nurses more than they have to in order to keep them. If there were more people with the stomach for the job, the hospitals would hire them and cut salaries as far as they were able.
 
$80k sounds entirely reasonable for the work nurses do. Pay isn't always about intellectual challenge. It's also physical challenge and also desirability of the work. And I do not believe $80k is the average in the least.
 
Promethean said:
I've made 80k a year as a nurse... working 60+ hour weeks every week and taking tons of call. My base salary was just 46k/yr, if I'd just worked the minimum 36-40 hours.
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Yeah, that's about what my base was. I made around $82,000 my first year as a nurse (Texas) but that was with a crap load of overtime, working nights, and no semblance of a life.

Actually, I take that back. I don't think my base was that high. It was probably late 30's. That was 10 years ago, so I don't remember exactly
 
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NoTownPreMed said:
Correct! Many new RN grad in my area are offered somewhere in the low $30's. Shift requires you to work 7 days/ 12 hr shifts, anything beyond 8 hrs is a time and a half, and beyond 12 hrs is double time. This is not including night and weekend differential. So that'll put you in the mid $70k range as a brand new RN.
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Well then you live in a weird area. Not sure what you are even saying in regards to the time 1/2 and double time.

My wife started at 20/hour as a grad nurse in a medium sized city. 3 12's a week which are really 13's. Not nursing home care either, post open heart surgery, and now pediatric oncology. I think she is maybe 30/hour now, which works out to about 55k a year. Take home pay is 36k. Its not living the high life by any means. She gets OT over 40 hours but nothing else (which is never available), some small weekend differential. This is all pretty standard in the two cities and 3 hospitals she's worked. So not sure where people are getting some these wild figures. Theres alot of variation with night shift...but when so many people choose to not do that even with a differential...tells you something.

That said I wouldn't want her job. Half the patients think she is a waitress, maid, etc. Spends all day with the same patients. Tons of charting.

Unfortunately it is a field with an extreme amount of variability in quality. More so than any profession I have come across. Some really great ones who care and are underpaid, and some awful ones who shouldn't be anywhere near the profession.
 
kmp0410 said:
Well then you live in a weird area. Not sure what you are even saying in regards to the time 1/2 and double time.

My wife started at 20/hour as a grad nurse in a medium sized city. 3 12's a week which are really 13's. Not nursing home care either, post open heart surgery, and now pediatric oncology. I think she is maybe 30/hour now, which works out to about 55k a year. Take home pay is 36k. Its not living the high life by any means. She gets OT over 40 hours but nothing else (which is never available), some small weekend differential. This is all pretty standard in the two cities and 3 hospitals she's worked. So not sure where people are getting some these wild figures. Theres alot of variation with night shift...but when so many people choose to not do that even with a differential...tells you something.

That said I wouldn't want her job. Half the patients think she is a waitress, maid, etc. Spends all day with the same patients. Tons of charting.

Unfortunately it is a field with an extreme amount of variability in quality. More so than any profession I have come across. Some really great ones who care and are underpaid, and some awful ones who shouldn't be anywhere near the profession.
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State of California. Per Department of Industrial Relations:
  1. One and one-half times the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of eight hours up to and including 12 hours in any workday, and for the first eight hours worked on the seventh consecutive day of work in a workweek; and
  2. Double the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 12 hours in any workday and for all hours worked in excess of eight on the seventh consecutive day of work in a workweek.
This is why many nurses from other parts of the state work in the state of California.
 
Darth Doc said:
I know a number of nurses who've had herniated discs or worse from attempting to turn morbidly obese patients. It's hard enough to turn a patient with a BMI of 25 who is 2x your size.

On the topic of paralyzed overweight persons, they can't eat food due to swallowing hazards, so they get put on tube feeding which is calculated based on their weight, and they end up gaining more weight, having loose stool, etc... I've legitimately always wondered why a weight loss regiment wasn't calculated into the tube feeding for morbidly obese patients. (Maybe it is?)
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might depend on the institution depending what protocols you have
for ours seemed like it was automatic if they were on tube feeds for a certain number of days that nutrition would be consulted and there would be note showing their calcs

fat cells are basically immortal and require like net 0 calories to live
with these immobilized patients if you think this is an opportunity for some starvation weight loss.... bad plan
if you cut calories and they are not even moving from their recliner to the bathroom like they might at home, you're looking at even more atrophy of metabolically active tissue like muscle than you're ALREADY getting because they're immobilized in the hospital
I may have seen somewhere as well that calorie restricted tube feeds can contribute to skin breakdown in this scenario to0

net result of trying to slash their calories in this circumstance might be overall weight loss, but the fat:muscle ratio will be worse than if they were slashing calories but doing even PT or ADLs to maintain muscle

and remember even really fat patients if you starve them can get re-feeding syndrome

so alas, while you don't want to make them *fatter* on TFs, it's not a good opportunity for the *right* kind of weight loss even though you could slash calories

the circumstances of calorie restriction makes a big difference for what you favor losing.... you want to lose fat and maintain muscle/bone

I might be wrong on some of the above

I do remember asking nutrition about this, and was content with the answer that immobilized patients the emphasis in nutrition is trying to make sure they are as nutritionally supported as possible to maintain metabolically active tissue.... that might mean the fat cells get a free ride and get overfed too

it's hard to calculate and if nutrition is following they can try to adjust for weight gain, but weight loss in this scenario is not a priority and is undesirable, and the number one goal is to make sure the immobilized person has the nutrients available for recovery
 
Darth Doc said:
I know a number of nurses who've had herniated discs or worse from attempting to turn morbidly obese patients. It's hard enough to turn a patient with a BMI of 25 who is 2x your size.

On the topic of paralyzed overweight persons, they can't eat food due to swallowing hazards, so they get put on tube feeding which is calculated based on their weight, and they end up gaining more weight, having loose stool, etc... I've legitimately always wondered why a weight loss regiment wasn't calculated into the tube feeding for morbidly obese patients. (Maybe it is?)
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I'm not totally sure either, but I'm seen some data showing 2-3x higher mortality in surgery patients who are malnourished. I imagine the same principle applies elsewhere, or is presumed to apply elsewhere. Although I think that has more to do with nutritional deficiencies (electrolytes, vitamin deficiencies, etc) than actual amounts.

In any case, I don't think the minor weight loss from being on tube feeds at a 10% cut or whatever for a few weeks would offset the risks. Especially when they immediately gained it back.

None of that touches on the inconvenience of having your weights shifting and losing info on whether the patient is diuresing, gaining fluid, etc.
 
Work as a nurse for a month. Don't just look at the supposedly all-inclusive job description and think you can suddenly be the judge of their monetary worth. Work a 12 hour night shift and then the 12 hour day shift because the retirement home is short staffed and the first shift nurse is puking her guts out at home and if you don't cover for her there won't be a first shift nurse to take care of your patients. Deal with patients who are literally trying to assault you in the behavioral health unit because they are hallucinating and haven't been taking their medications due to financial restrictions. You work under the "holier-than-thou" doctors who have their nose to the ceiling and couldn't care less that you just worked your ass off trying to do damage control on their patient, who then blame and ridicule you for intruding upon their sacred time even though they are the on-call doctor anyway. You be the case manager for hospice where you are given patients who are GOING TO DIE under your care, where you give them comfort in their final, agonizing days, tell their families that their loved one is declining faster than expected, and go to funeral after funeral for people you grew to love as you watched them die.

Do that, and then tell me nurses aren't worth their weight in gold. I dare you.
 
NoTownPreMed said:
State of California. Per Department of Industrial Relations:
  1. One and one-half times the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of eight hours up to and including 12 hours in any workday, and for the first eight hours worked on the seventh consecutive day of work in a workweek; and
  2. Double the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 12 hours in any workday and for all hours worked in excess of eight on the seventh consecutive day of work in a workweek.
This is why many nurses from other parts of the state work in the state of California.
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Wow thats wild. That goes for more than just nursing? Time and a half over 8 hours? Regardless of the profession...that law is literally blowing my mind. 8 freaking hours.

Also, I know Cali is pretty expensive so 75k there is probably comparable to much less in other places. Furthering my point that its tough to compare these numbers across the country.
 
Uh...that sounds fairly normal.

Nurses deserve to make that much. That is a great thing! I guess I can't name one thing wrong with a nurse making 80K...
 
The conversations about people "deserving" a certain salary in any profession confuses the hell out of me.

Compensation is not dictated by difficulty of work or even years of education; compensation is a simple result of supply and demand. Output must justify the input in any business, and the revenue nurses generate says they're worth what they're paid.
 
In comparison, computer programmers straight out of a 3-month coding bootcamp can earn $80k+ and be showered with lavish perks including catered meals, on-site laundry, free shuttles, etc. It's also not uncommon to do less than 4 hours of productive work, play foosball / video games / NERF wars of the remainder of the day, and leave early on Fridays.

If $80k to literally clean up crap is overpaid, then how about being paid $80-120k for not doing crap?
 
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