hello everyone! i'm currently working as an accountant, but considering switching careers and becoming a nurse. i have always had an interest in the healthcare profession, particularly working as an operating room nurse. however, i do not know any nurses so i have a few questions that i was hoping i could get clarified.
first of all, what is the earning potential in a nursing career? i have been reading online the average starting salary of nurses, but i can not find the salary of a nurse with 3, 5, or 10 years of experience? does their salary not increase with experience?
does going to a school that is highly ranked land you a better job than going to a school that is not as highly ranked?
also, do nurses get health benefits and retirement plans? any opinions as to whether you would recommend nursing as a career are highly appreciated.
I would agree with Fab4, but then we are pals, with often similar minds.
Pay rates vary greatly with areas and specialties. RNs working in an office, w/no weekends and no holidays, in the Southern areas may be doing god to get 12-20 an hour. Hospital rates may be more like 16-23 for new RNs, with benefits. But the same nurse can start at a NY or Boston facility for more like 24-30, as well as much better bennies (more paid education days, an hour break instead of thirty minutes, uniform allowances). However, the COLis high.
Specialty nurses in more intense environments, after a year or two of experince or certification, usually are paid more. As an onco/hemo traveler, I get paid more for BMT units than Onco units.
Benefits for fulltime include usually insurance, paid time off, educational reimbursement, retirement plans - in some areas, paid education days, reimbursement for board fees/certification, uniform allowances, etc. The bennies are usually better in areas w/high levels of unionization (NYC).
As a traveler that does not work strikes, my payrate would probably be better if I were staff - especially if I added up for better insurance, PTO as a staffer. I have over 11 years in Hemo/Onco and 2 in ID. Of course as a traveler, I get "free" housing. However, if I do not want to be heavily and disproportionately taxed on the money spent to house me, I like most travelers have a tax home residence. So either way, I do end up paying for housing. Either in heavy taxes or maintaining my home. I also have to periodically go off the road and work to maintain that status.
If you are a fairly new (2-5 years in) nurse, traveling will pay better. Strike nurses make big bucks, if that is the way you want to live your life (not me!!). But you will "pay" for it - they frequently require heavy OT, and you will have to deal with social issues.
I do not necessarily work for the best paying assignments, and I don't do that much OT, and usually break 60,000, occasionally 65,000. However if you added in the housing that I had, it easily went over 70,000 - that particular year I made some bonuses.
Traveling is tough. While everyone thinks it sounds fabulous, it requires a lot of patience, fortitude, and bane of my existance, paperwork. You try starting you life over every 3 monthes, chasing that special tests and licenses, for each new place, not to mention readjusting, and having to continually "prove" yourself. Fab can tell recently that I went to a city that sounded like a paradise assignment and it quickly became the nightmare from hell (worst in my life and that says a lot) facility. And I still had to grit my teeth, plaster a smile on my face and fulfill the 13 week contract. And I hated every minute.
You must have at least one year working as an RN before traveling for patient safety and your safety, preferably 2-5.
Pay Rates for experienced nurses tend to stagnant after about 7-10 years.
No one really cares what nursing school that you went, except maybe in the immediate area. I have an ADN from a rather minor comm college (did Bachelor's work for another degree before nursing) and I have worked for good hospitals and been offered permanent positions after traveling at 3 facilities listed in the top Ten. What matters is how good you are at what you do, your enthusiasm and people skills.
Nursing itself is a great career. If every department did what it is supposed to, if all the MDs did their jobs (med recs, dc orders, legible writing), if they patients did what they were supposed to, to get well....I would be dancing down the halls, with my spotless white dress and cap, carry a cup of pills, passing them gingerly, and giving everyone a nice backrub to make them feel better. If all I did was nurse as I was taught in school, life would be a joy
But that never happens.
The computers don't work, the meds won't scan in the emar (required 100% scan stats). All the therapeutic communications you were taught, med info, will not do squat when your 300lb, 6 foot 4inch patient in bilateral CPMs goes into DTs during a platelet transfusion, goes walking down the hall with the cpms still attached, along with part of the bedframe - rips out his IV spilling platelets to the floor and bleeding. The same patient that swore he didn't drink on admission.. Then you call an MD that gets ticked at being disturbed and orders Haldol 0.5mg PO for the pt.
You do chart checks and cannot read half the orders. Several are ordered wrong in the computer because you had a float secretary. You have 3 DCs waiting to leave and not one of the MDs wrote: DC order/DC sheet/and/or reconciled the meds. Despite the fact that all of the forms were right on the chart on top of the orders where they could not be missed and only required a few quick check marks.
You ask for 12 hour shifts because they permit consistancy in caregiving, and then you get floated to 3 separate units in 12 hours....on your first day off orientation. MDs call for up to the minute results and your code will not let you into the system on that unit. You are busily trying to sort through 18 different report sheets (6 patients each unit), and they are muttering about incompetence.
They may make you wear a phone and a beeper and a locator. I clocked 55 phone calls in one shift, most from the thousands of friends/relatives/apssing acquaintances asking personal questions about A/O patients and therefore we are not permitted to answer them d/t HIPAA. Or trying to get "Bill" DC'd early, "because we know the president/CEO/CFO".
Some administrative idiot pulls you off the floor to quiz you on CARE, the new press-gainey intiative for "customer care". They ask you the proper scripted response to the patient comment, "Why can't they hire some decent girls around here that speak English?". And makes sure that you have your "5 For 5" button on.
And when you get to the end of shift to give report, well, the assignment changes twice while trying to give report. Plus ER sends a patient without calling report and it is always given to the traveler/agency/float nurse.
I love nursing and love cancer care. It's the bean counters and the administrators that can kill enthusiasm.
