My daughter in law is an RN . Experienced with Pediatric ICU . Now , with the shortage of skilled , experienced Nurses , she has signed on at a local Children's Hospital in the Intensive Care unit .
Three 12 hr shifts per week @ $90 hr plus $10 shift differential for nights . That's damn good money , folks . Something to consider ...

My daughter is currently enrolled and the financial outlook is excellent. My cousin's wife is an RN with almost 20 years experience and she brings home a hefty sum of money each month.

And they earn every penny. Not a very easy job. Lots of responsibility, and very little respect.

PICU nursing is not a walk in the park. They deserve every penny.

The Mrs. is a retired ER Charge Nurse. The offers she has been getting are north of $100 an hour and "pick your hours".

Have a few friends whose wives are travel nurses. They're making great money with housing and food stipends to travel. One got a gig only 2 hours away, comes home on her off days or he goes up there.

This bubble can't last forever so they'd better take advantage. I know one guy who is in nursing school, probably a questionable nursing school as he's doing his labs online, who thinks he's going to break into the ER as a "baby nurse" making $60/hour. Problem is he forgot he's a lazy idiot.

My #2 son has been RN most of last decade. Good market for the right skills. He has regular ER/intensive care position, plus any extra shifts at his choice. He has medical missions at least every other year. Not a cushy job for sure.

Trouble is, a WHOLE BUNCH of places that need nurses demand the NotAVax which is a Non-starter for my RN spouse. She has adult and PEDS ED experience over 20 years.
She filed an exemption with her current employer. (who absolutely LOVE her work and work ethic)
All signs point to them honoring it.

She will pass on the bonuses, pick your own hours, and whatever other carrot is dangled.
She worked ED through the worst of the Wuflu for over a year. Never. Got. Sick.

My wife is an OR nurse and just became a travel nurse. I don't see myself working past the summer. It doesn't make financial sense. I'll be homeschooling my son and doing full time gunsmithing next year. She'll continue the travel nurse gig. I'm astonished at what she's getting paid.

Right now she's working in Seattle M-F and home on the weekends (PDX).

Tony.

Good for you Benny!
Hope it all works out.

Wife retired last year after 40 years as an OR RN. Her place of employment has called four times, begging her to come back part-time. $100.00 an hour!

Indeed.

From today's WSJ:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/n...000?mod=hp_lead_pos7

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Nurse Salaries Rise as Demand for Their Services Soars During Covid-19 Pandemic

Average annual salary for registered nurses, not including bonus pay such as overtime, increased about 4% this year to $81,376

Nurses have played a critical role during the pandemic, tending to Covid-19 patients in addition to their work with more typical patients.

By Nov. 17, 2021 5:30 am ET

Nurses are winning raises worth thousands of dollars a year from hospitals, the latest employer reckoning with a tight labor market.

HCA Healthcare Inc., HCA -0.35% one of the nation’s largest hospital chains, increased nurse pay this year to handle heavy Covid-19 pandemic case loads and keep pace with rivals that are also trying to fill vacancies and hold on to existing staff, the company’s human resources chief said. Raises varied by market; an HCA spokesman declined to say by what amounts.

Other hospitals say they have raises in the works to keep up with competitors’ offers. A small Missouri hospital desperate for nurses this month raised nurse salaries by up to 5% after hospitals nearly 40 miles away boosted wages.

“We were forced to,” said Sarah Hanak, chief nursing officer at Citizens Memorial Hospital in Bolivar, Mo. “We absolutely have to stay competitive.”

The average annual salary for registered nurses, not including bonus pay such as overtime, grew about 4% in the first nine months of the year to $81,376, according to healthcare consultants Premier Inc., which analyzed salaries of about 60,000 nurses for The Wall Street Journal.

That is up from the 3.3% increase in average annual nurse wages in all of 2020 and 2.6% growth the year before the pandemic, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The nation’s $1 trillion hospital sector is among the U.S. economy’s largest to be squeezed by upheaval across its workforce and strong demand for services following rollout of vaccines and an economic rebound. Similar disruption across sectors in retail, transportation and hospitality is also raising their workers’ wages and job prospects.

Nurses have played a critical role during the pandemic, tending to Covid-19 patients flooding emergency rooms and filling hospital beds, in addition to their work with more typical patients.

Members of the Michigan Nurses Association picketed in Lansing earlier this month to protest inadequate staffing, a problem at many hospitals.

The need for nurses has risen so high that many have been able to make even better livings by leaving hospital payrolls and instead hopping between temporary jobs seeking emergency staffing, hospital recruiters and executives say.

The changes have pushed up turnover and job openings at hospitals, leading to chronic staffing shortages as Covid-19 cases keep coming and many patients who had postponed care for other conditions seek treatment.

“We are employing more nurses now than we ever have, and we also have more vacancies than we ever had,” said Greg Till, chief people officer at Renton, Wash.-based Providence health system, which operates 52 hospitals across seven states largely in the Western U.S.

Nurse turnover rates have increased to about 22% this year, compared with an annual rate of around 18% in 2019, the last year before the pandemic, says Premier.

For many hospitals, higher labor costs threaten to crimp already tight margins. As a result, some may curb services to tighten expenses, or seek higher prices from health insurers to help cover the additional labor costs.

Nurses, meanwhile, have been able to take advantage of their increased clout. Some have secured more flexible work schedules, according to recruiters, nurses and hospital executives.

The Providence system, which has raised some nurses’ wages to keep their salaries competitive, is offering nurses more time off and greater schedule flexibility to combat burnout, new career development opportunities and other nonsalary perks to attract and retain staff, Mr. Till said.

Other nurses have advanced their careers faster than they would have, employers say. And they say new graduates, who once needed experience and training before hospitals would hire them to work in the operating room or perform other specialized roles, are now a growing share of new hires. Hospitals are doing more on-the-job training as a result.

“I think you get to write your ticket,” said Tessa Johnson, president of the North Dakota Nurses Association.

Jefferson Health, which has 18 hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, raised salaries 10% for its nearly 10,000 nurses in May after the system found rivals had increased compensation, said Kate FitzPatrick, who became the system’s chief nurse executive in January. “The circumstances required it,” she said.

Some new recruits out of nursing schools, seeing Jefferson’s salary offers, have asked, “Are you sure that’s not a typo?” said recruiter Tierra Seay. Yet others have rejected the offers as too low and didn’t take a job with Jefferson, she said.

Nurse Stephanie Fernandez entered the job market this spring, using LinkedIn.com to notify prospective employers. Recruiters eagerly contacted her, including temporary-agency recruiters who tracked down her phone number and called out of the blue, she said.

“Everybody and anybody wants you,” Ms. Fernandez said. She chose Jefferson, where she now cares for transplant patients, because of its Philadelphia location and because its salary offer beat out other potential employers, she said. She declined to give her salary.

Citizens Memorial, the southwestern Missouri hospital, raised salaries for all nurses by up to 5% this month after minimum-wage increases made by rivals in the larger city of Springfield forced Citizens to up the hourly wages of custodians and kitchen staff.

Citizens didn’t want newly hired nurses to leave because the gap between their salaries and minimum wage had narrowed, Ms. Hanak said.

Now, Citizens is trying to make sure it has enough nurses to fill overnight shifts. To do so, Ms. Hanak said she has asked the hospital’s chief executive to give nurses who work night shifts an increase of about 15% an hour.

It also may soon need to boost nurse wages again because Mercy health system, which owns one of the Springfield hospitals, is reviewing nurse salaries at rival hospitals every six months to stay competitive, said Betty Jo Rocchio, Mercy’s chief nursing officer.

Write to Melanie Evans at Melanie.Evans@wsj.com

Copyright ©2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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My daughter is an RN. She's killing it. Works three 12 hour days a week and getting close to 150K a year. She get's offers from all over the country. It's unbelievable.

My neice graduated top of her class last Spring and is an RN in Myrtle Beach, SC (moved from VA). She's doing great financially, and always wanted to be a nurse.

quote:

Originally posted by Batty67:
My neice graduated top of her class last Spring and is an RN in Myrtle Beach, SC (moved from VA). She's doing great financially, and always wanted to be a nurse.

That’s awesome. You become a nurse just because of the money there’s a good chance you’re going to be miserable. There’s a lot more to it than most people can imagine for sure. My mom was a nurse and I have several family members who are nurses and some of the stories are unbelievable.

My mother was a nurse and it takes a special personality and desire for that type of work. They earn every penny.
If you are that person, you will always be able to find a job, and in times like this, a great paying job. It's always been a decent paying job but right now it's an essential service and employers must fill those positions so the laws of supply and demand rule.

Yes, there's good money to be made right now, but there's some strings attached...

It's a high demand right now with Covid, I'm not sure if this is a bubble and how long it will last. Some of the high hourly rates or high weekly grosses that are advertised have some fine print attached. Fine print of working 60 hour weeks, etc. It's also somewhat limited which fields within nursing are getting the high end offers, generally it's ICU and ER. OR can be sketchy with some hospitals eliminating elective surgeries.

Then there's also the fact that a lot of the salaries are being subsidized by the feds and state governments. Once the funding runs out, a lot of those high paying opportunities are going to evaporate.

I've got a lot of friends and former coworkers who are traveling now and chasing the big contracts. At times I think I should, but then I remember I have a house, a dog and I live in Alaska so getting to the lower 48 is a PITA. I'm also 5 months into a 2 year contract that I signed in order to get a signing bonus. That contract also came with a significant raise from what I was making. So not making as much as I could if I chose to chase traveling positions, but doing better than I was and in a stable position.

It's great for nurses with all the money being offered in bonuses and recruitment. Sadly, there really isn't any money being spent on staff retention. Healthcare has kind of created the traveling pay bubble, it's going to be interesting to see how long it lasts.

I'll also add, that working as an RN in the ER with the current pandemic really s not all that fun. Not that it was, "Fun" to begin with, but there are some nights that really do suck.

Wearing PPE and the constant donning and doffing gets old quick. It also extends the time that it takes to conduct patient care. We are usually at or over capacity which means there is no downtime at all. There's a lot of pressure to turn and burn rooms and get the next patient in from the waiting room or accept the next ambulance.

Patient acuities are a lot higher right now. It's not just Covid positive patients with complications, a lot are patients that had a relatively minor problem, didn't get it taken care of and now it's a major problem. With the hospital being full we end up holding patients in the ER until beds open up. A lot of these patients require ICU level of care. A typical ICU nurse has a 1:2 patient ratio. We run 1:4 in the ER and at times those 4 patients are ICU holds.

Then there's the patient attitudes. We have had patients check in, Covid positive, unvaccinated, and have an O2 saturation of 72% that will start ranting that Covid isn't real, it's all a government conspiracy, demanding medical treatments that they read about on he internet, refusing to abide by isolation protocols, calling us incompetent, murderous bastards, etc. And yet here they are checking into the hospital because they can't breathe.

I just refuse to take part in those conversations any longer. I just thank them for the job security, treat and move on.

I heard a new one the other day. I heard a patient thank a nurse for her service. Never heard that before.

Negatory.

It's good money to be sure, but they earn every penny of it.

They're also subject to stupid shit that hospital administrators come up with.

I wouldn't want my kids to put up with all that bullshit. 12 hour shifts of hard work, a bunch of workplace bullshit, stress of your work actually deciding patient outcomes...and to pull maybe $200k, $250k? Limited by your own health and the hours you can put in...

I know car salesmen at non-luxury dealerships that make that much. I see Real Estate agents pulling twice that much on their own, and much more if they run a team. Actuaries make about that much, never have to sell anything, and nobody ever dies from their mistakes. Union longshoremen running cranes make twice that. And then there's the stupid amount of money to be made as data engineer.