Empowering Nurses at the Bedside and in Business

Nurses’ Salaries

Recently, I came across an ever so interesting article in Becker’s ASC Review regarding statistics on why ambulatory surgery centers are concerned.

According to a Medscape study, the hourly rate for a full-time registered nurse is $40/hour with part time R.N.’s earning $42.00 per hour.  What caught my eye was that, though they do not get the full-time benefits, part-timers do make more per hour.

Registered Nurses make an average of $83,000 at hospital-based outpatient facilities as compared to $36,000 (about $17.30 per hour) at non-hospital based medical offices.  Both are usually 9 to 5 jobs, Monday through Friday. Why is a nurse making so much less in a non-hospital based medical office and why are nurses accepting so much less?

55% of R.N.s don’t think they are being fairly compensated, and they are absolutely right.  The annual nurse’s salary grew 4% in the first 9 months of 2021 which is a loss once you factor in the current inflation rate which was 6.2% as of October.  That is a loss for nurses doing what they can during this pandemic, especially since hospitals, pursuant to the CARES ACT, are getting bonused on every COVID patient they treat.

What are nurses doing to let their employees know that they deserve better pay at something that matches or exceeds the country’s inflation rate?  It seems the past couple of potential strikes have all been resolved but money was an important issue during those strikes.  I think both sides compromised which meant nurses did not get the pay that they wanted in order to avoid striking.

So far in 2021 the turnover rate was 22%, up from 18% in 2019.

The most noticeable statistic was that 50,000 R.N.s are expected to retire during the year 2022.  Therefore, 1.1 million new R.N.s will be needed to meet the needs of American healthcare.

That is quite a striking statistic because the care delivered by experienced R.N.’s is important to mentor new R.N.s.

It takes a while to get comfortable being a R.N. and certainly the experienced R.N.s are more desirable.

All of this is quite concerning for ambulatory care surgery centers.

It looks like it’s time for a complete overhaul of our healthcare system because I’m not sure how healthcare of which nurses, who are 80% of the work force, are going to be able to manage with 25% of its workforce gone when we are understaffed already.

 

 

 

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