It’s A Good Time To Become A Nurse

Here’s a joke I just made up: “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “RN.” “RN who?” RN’t you glad you went into medicine?”

Get it? RN? Feel free to keep chuckling as you read on.

The healthcare biz is booming: it “has added 407,000 jobs during the first 10 months of 2015. Healthcare companies shed jobs during the uncertainty in the lead-up to the ACA, but as patient volume has returned, they’re now rushing to meet the demand.” Specifically they’re looking to fill “nursing positions.”

Best of all, if you’re a nurse or thinking of becoming one, “salaries and bonuses for nurses have been ‘unprecedented,’ she said, as hospitals vie to fill open positions.”

Being that nursing is a chronically undervalued profession, staffed overwhelmingly by women, many of them minorities, this is cause to cheer. I wonder to what degree the slow but steady advance of men into the field is helping it gain legitimacy. As that recent Men’s Lib! piece made us aware, in 1980 only 3% of RNs were male; now the percentage is triple that. And that jibes with my personal experience. Several men I know have gone into nursing of late.

Now if only female nurses could figure out how to make as much as male ones. Detailed studies from this year show that the pay gap — even in this traditionally female field! — is sobering, elaborate, and consistent.

male registered nurses (RNs) have higher salaries than female registered RNs. … In ambulatory care the salary gap was $7,678 and in hospital settings it was $3,873. The smallest pay gap was found in chronic care ($3,792) and the largest was in cardiology($6,034). The only specialty in which no significant pay gap between men and women RNs was detected was orthopedics. The salary difference was also found to extend across the range of positions, including roles such as middle management and nurse anesthetists.

I feel like every time I’ve had some version of this conversation, someone says, “That’s because more men become nurse anesthetists.” Well, apparently, even female nurse anesthetists make less than their male counterparts, so chew on that. Or rather, gurgle as you lie there unconsciously.

Anyway, the Men’s Lib! authors want even more men to become nurses and even suggest changing the name in case that would help. Godspeed. At the same time, hopefully new women entering the profession and the women who are already on the front lines will use this opportunity to negotiate hard on their own behalf.

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