ALT-7 Do Nurses Deserve a Raise
I have been a LPN for seven years now. When I finished school I went straight into working for the local hospital. First of all let me tell you that the pay was only two dollars more than what the CNA's were making and at the time LPN's were trained to do everything that an RN was able to do. Other than hanging chemo, and accessing port-a-caths LPN's did it. Yet the RN's were paid between $12 and $18 dollars more an hour. I do realize that they went to school a year longer and did have a few extra duties, but I feel that the LPN's got too much responsibility for the pay that was given.
After working at the hospital for four years I started working private duty nursing full-time. The pay was higher, approximately $15 to $20 higher yet we still had to deal with much responsibility. We had no CNA's to help with the work. Plus we had to work extreme hours without overtime. We also do not receive any benefits while working private duty.
Yet is it really worth working 32 hours straight for fear of your license getting pulled, and dealing with families that are sometimes on drugs and aggressive toward you just for the extra money? I have been in all of these situations. I have been stuck in a house for 32 hours straight, even though you are only legally allowed to work 20 hours. Simply because they could not get any nurse to come and relieve me and the family was refusing to take care of the patient themselves. I have been in many houses where the family was abusive, both verbally and at times physically, to the nurses, yet the agencies continued to send nurses out to these houses even after reports had been made.
Nowadays, I feel that you cannot pay a nurse enough in any field. The physical damage to a nurses' body starts at the beginning and increases throughout the years. A nurse is not just a person to give medicine and take your blood pressure. A nurse has to deal with more emotional situations than most can deal with or even at times imagine. All in all a nurse will never be paid enough.
