Registered Nurse?? Do they get paid well?

What do you guys think about the wages reflecting supply and demand in the Registered Nurse field?? DO you guys think they get paid enough for what they do??

Nurses are paid very well. Most RN's make $20+/hour fresh out of school. Some nurses I know are traveling nurses. They take a contract to work for a hospital for a certain amount of time (all over the US) and while they are working they get a housing and food allowance as well as really good pay.

The pay is only going to go up.

Right now the average age of nurses is between 45 and 50 and the rate of graduation is not keeping up with the rate of retirement, let alone the need for more nurses due to the population growth.

Nurses often have a very strong union and they are no longer unwilling to go on strike, so they can get some pretty good contracts and benefits. (Las Vegas nurses at one hospital just got a 3 year contract, with a 5% pay raise this year, and 3% for each of the next two years.)

If you do not want to work in a hospital, you can work in doctor's offices, nursing homes, be a visiting home nurse or a school nurse. Get a masters degree and you can teach nursing. Since there is a nursing shortage, there is also an instructor shortage so there are some big bucks in that.

Advanced Practice Nurses (Nurse Midwives, Nurse Practitioners, Nurse Anesthetists) make in the $100,000 - $175,000 range so if you do not make enough as a general RN, you can get advance practice training.

All in all, a pretty good field. The demand is there, jobs are everywhere, you can move to any part of the USA and find a job. Benefits are also usually pretty good, specially health care.

The down side is in more and more areas, there is a large portion of the population that does not speak English and the general response of the hospital is that the staff should learn Spanish. If you are not good with languages, you may not want to work in that kind of situation as taking care of someone when there is a language difference is hard, and I might say, risky.