An emergency room nurse is one of most highly skilled specialties in nursing. They work with types of patients and different of injuries and illnesses. They to be prepared for anything because emergency room can be unpredictable.
A nurse can simply bandaging up the cuts of a child one moment. Then next moment, this nurse could be treating people in the trauma center who are fighting for their lives. An ER nurse has to be ready to handle that situation and help lead a medical team to treat these patients.
These nurses are highly educated. Most of them carry a BSN. Some of them even have an MSN. ER nurses understand and execute the nursing process. They have served through many clinical rotations and have a bunch of certifications under their belt.
Some of these certifications include:
– Basic Life Support
– Advanced Life Support
– Advanced Cardiac Life Support
– Pediatric Advanced Life Support
– Neonatal Resuscitation
– CPR and more
What makes these nurses so special is their ability to adapt, learn, and execute quickly. Not all nurses could work in the ER because it requires you to be on your toes at all times during shift. There is very little down time unless the ER is slow that particular night.
How Much ER Nurses Make?
These factors are hours worked, years of experience, level of education, contract specifics, performance based merit, supply and demand, and location. I will explain more in depth below.
– Hours Worked – Obviously a nurse that works part time will not make as much money as nurse works full time. Rightfully so. The more common theme is when you work and the amount of overtime worked.
Nurse make more money working nights and weekends. Plus, they make time and half for working overtime. No matter where a ER nurses work, they can make a large amount of money if they can work consist overtime.
– Years Of Experience – There is not much to this. The more years of relevant work experience a nurse, the more they will get paid. Nurses with experience are seen as more valuable on the market than ones who are fresh out of school with no experience.
– Level of Education – Whatever a nurse lacks in experience, he or she can fill a lot of the gap with higher level education. The more advanced your education is, the more you will get paid. Advancing your education is quickest way to move up in the medical industry.
– Contract Specifics – This is the compensation plan (salary, bonuses, pay raises) that nurse agrees and signs to upon starting the job. The specifics of the contract are legally binding but they can be amended. Make sure you negotiate all terms of your contract with your employer before signing.
– Level of Performance – If specified in their contract, nurses can get paid more or earn bonuses for meeting certain metrics in their performance. Nurses can also demand larger pay increases if they are outperforming their peers and prove their value to the organization.
– Location – The salary nurses are paid will vary depending on where they work. Nurses that work in places that have higher cost of living and where the demand for nurses is higher will get paid much more than country average.
See also RN Salary
Nurses that work in New York City, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston will make way more than nurses that work in Topeka, Kansas or New London, Connecticut. Because the cost of living in latter places is much lower.
There are not as many potential patients to treat because the population are a lot smaller. This makes the market demand lower.
As discussed above, there are a lot of factors that go into how much an ER nurse going to make. However, these nurses are well compensated. They may deal with extreme stressors on the job and some potentially dangerous situations. However, they are well paid.
Plus working in the emergency room is a great way to gain experience for a young nurse that is straight out of college. It is usually this type of experience that will play a significant role in getting into a good graduate school program or advancing your career. So nurses can benefit from the ER in more than just monetary compensation.
Either way, do your research. Figure out if working in the emergency room is for you before diving in. Do this and you should be okay.