Nurses Paid Better Than Doctors In The USA

I found this article to be. . . surprising.

My boyfriend is in the final years of getting his Physicians Assistant education (six years) and has been offered a starting salary of $95k by the Cleveland Clinic (along with loan pay-off signing bonus; which I hope he doesn't take, because my career options are better if I move out West where his rosie options will remain the same). As the sole provider in this relationship, I eagerly await his upcoming gainful employment.

What is troubling to think about is the fact that he may have chosen the wrong education path. SHIT! He could be making just under $200k as a nurse anesthetist. What were we thinking!?

~String

 

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The nurse anaesthetist has a very specific job, pretty much the same as an anesthesiologist. So a few moments with the patient conscious and then monitoring machines. A PA is a very diversified job with much more (conscious) patient contact.

I hope he chose his field for the job itself at least to some serious degree. Besides 95 K is a living wage.

 

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He chose medicine because he loves medicine, avoided being a doctor because he hated the thought of so many years of college, and chose P.A. because of the pay and job security. This is the same methodology used by most people who chose their specific field in medicine.

Originally it was a choice between some radiology degree (a masters, I believe), nurse practitioner, pharmacist and physician's assistant. He settled on P.A.--as I said--because of a combination of pay, work-life balance, education time, job security and involvement in medical decision making.

~String

 

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PA is not MD. Nurse Anesthetist is not RN. If you want to marry a guy who is going to make good money dump your guy and marry a urologist.

 

desi, is that your dream carreer? A urologist?

 

Can you read? I clearly spell out my understanding of the differences. I come from a medical family (sister's a dentist, mother was in her internship to be an oncologist when she died, best friend's dad was a cardiologist). I know the difference, Desi.

I'm not marrying anybody for money. Hell, I make plenty on my own and have been offered well over a 100k if I would move to Cali, right now (which I can't until the BF graduates). That said, it'll be nice when he's finally bringing in some income. We have dreams of fun vacations in Europe.

~String

 

No, if I was younger it wouldn't be a bad choice. Careers like Urologist are like taking a good dump. Underated.

 

Sounds like fun. Just make sure the student loan monster doesn't get ya.

 

LOL.

He has a wealthy grandmother, a father who's an executive at GM (which, I jokingly tell him is not a good job right now). What little loans he may incur can well be paid for with signing bonuses and our salary expectations. Much of his school is actually paid-for with a nifty academic scholarship (he has book smarts, but OH so few street smarts).

~String

 

Nurse are worth more than doctors as they are harder to find. At my hospital nurse get a starting salary of 96k a year and they are usually right out of school. The experienced ones could probably probably afford to purchase a wing in the hospital.

 

I don't think it's should matter if you are an MD, PO, RN etc... what should matter is the service you provide and the market you work in. We need to open OPEN, way way WAY open up the medical services sector. Let's face it, it's not that hard. I teach medicine ... to medical doctors. The field is not doing itself any good by selecting their candidates from the most greedy - to become carers. That's absolutely asinine. Most people just want to plug into a system and milk it. Most people are not interested in creating - just milking. They want to get big money, but not at the cost of going out and trying to make something themselves, but, pluggin into a "sure thing" and milking it. They don't want change. Statuesque is most people's objective, because it's secure.

Any monkey can perform medicine and surgery with some practice. I trained a student to do a gross neurosurgery for research on a mouse brain the other day, which is pretty damn small, and in one week she was doing it by herself and doing it pretty much perfectly.

What we need to do is to crank up the sausage factories.
Maintain PUBLIC review bases. I don't mind my work being scrutinized.
Pump out the sausages and measure their performance. Create massive competition so that the only people who want to go into the business of caring, are people who care about caring for people - not in just making big money off other people's ill health. And don't give me that "I want to help people", by the Gods we hate to hear that. An IT specialists helps people. Health care SHOULD be cheap and affordable and most of all about caring for the ill.

meh.... anyway, mark my words, lack of competition in the medical businesses is the #1 reason most Western economies will be going bankrupt in 20 years.

 

In fact all nurse anesthetists are RNs. However, they are RNs with several years more advanced training.

 

Looks like apples and oranges.

Family practice is one of the easier disciplines to go into after med school. I imagine the CRNAs have a lot of training, like anesthesiologists, who are among the highest paid doctors.

 

In the USA, on average, the top paid doc is Orthopedic Surgeons specializing in spinal reconstruction. High malpractice, but high payoff. The highest paid doctors (not based on specialty average, but based on actual wages of top bracket doctors) are Corneal Surgeons specializing in Lasik (they can make up to 10k per day, with VERY little face time, no follow-up and few lawsuits, though the field is cutthroat and the overall average is dropping) and Plastic Surgeons (for obvious reasons, they can make into the many millions).

~String

 

Wow, that's what you make?
You make almost 10 times more (base/on average) as a nurse in the U.S than what you'd make where I live.
And it's very expensive to live here. The physicians I know would kill for a salary like that, not to mention the nurses.

 

most doctors are compleatly useless. its the nurses who actually do the work

take your adverage GP and throw a pt with cardiac chest pain or an MVA at them and watch them fall to bits. i would rather have a first aider or an EN from a nursing home backing me up than your adverage GP

 

Remind me to ask the doctors to let the nurses do the cutting next time I need surgery.....

Or maybe if I ever need a biopsy for potential cancer I should ask the pathologists to step aside and let some nurses make the diagnosis.

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If you want a proper diagnosis by a person with all the intellectual tools to follow the process through to its proper conclusion: get a doctor. If you have the sniffles or a sore throat: see a nurse.

~String

 

The proper conclusion of "the process" is full convalescence, and physicians are unlikely to concern themselves with seeing a patient all the way through that. That would be what you want to see a nurse practitioner for.

However, seeing a physician in order to be diagnosed is fine.

 

The "conclusion" I was referring to was the "conclusion" of the diagnosis. No further. Anything beyond that would and could be handled by nurses, nurses aid, PA's and whatnot.

~String