In the ED where I work, I am one of only 18 nurses who work there. Two of those 18 nurses are PRN (I am one of them). Of those 18, two of them just got transferred to a different location, one just took a job in another department, and two quit. Doing the math, we just lost a quarter of our nursing staff. That tends to happen with nursing- it’s difficult to find good nurses, and competitors try to hire them away.
They are trying to hire more and have had a few interviews, but no one who has been offered the job has accepted. I’m guessing it’s because nursing pay in the area has climbed again and my employer is offering less than the candidates are being offered elsewhere. They will be forced to raise starting pay again, which is the only way to get a raise- about every two years, change jobs for more money.
At any rate, we still need to staff the place, and to do that, management has declared a critical need. When they do that, the bonuses come out. For the months of July and August, any shift you pick up in addition to your contract gets you a bonus: $33.33 per hour ($400 for a shift) on weekdays, $41.67 per hour ($500 for a shift) on weekends. Since I am PRN, I am only contracted to work one day per week, meaning that I get that bonus for every day that I work in a week beyond that first one. Even if I only work full time hours, I get $800-$1000 per week in bonuses.
The best part is that it is the slow season for emergency departments around the state, so our workload is low. High pay and low work? Of course I jumped on it. I am working a bunch this July, but I am going to make about $20,000 this month alone. When the August schedule gets done, I will try to do the same.
That just adds to the retirement fund. I will be busy, but still working less and making more than I would if I were full time.
13 Comments
footintheforest · June 28, 2026 at 9:12 am
The tax man thanks you for your “voluntary” contribution. IMHO now would be a good time to fortify the 401k with personally held 1/10-ounce gold eagles.
Divemedic · June 28, 2026 at 10:54 am
Im reducing my tax burden by maxing out our tax free accounts.
Grumpy51 · June 28, 2026 at 9:29 am
The profession has done it to itself with the help of federal government.
Medicare started it with federal money. Then EMTALA happened from a case in Liberty TX (1980s?). Now all of a sudden, NO ONE could be turned away without a medical screening exam (MSE) to ensure no emergency is happening. Every hospital I’ve worked in has taken this to mean that we (providers) have to see AND treat, even if an emergency isn’t anywhere near happening for the next 24 hours.
Now the PCP (primary care, not the drug 😎) are overloaded which pushes people to the ER – THE most expensive place to get treatment.
Add COVID into the mix where ICU bedside nurses were being paid $15k weekly (12H, 6D weekly) at the small regional hospital I’m at.
I moved to TX in 2000. Per the TX state board of nursing, the state was 50k nurses short….. in 2000. One hospital I worked at was a 225-bed hospital, but only had staffing for 40-45 beds.
When you hear about bed shortages, there are 2 DIFFERENT reasons, with 2 totally different solutions. The first is physical bed capacity – how many beds is the facility licensed for. A shortage here is a 2-4 year solution- build a new facility.
The second is a staffing shortage. This problem has a longer-term impact as schools have to be developed, faculty hired, and testing proven.
Hiring H1Bs has it’s own problems- not understanding English, not knowing generic v trade names (medications), different cultures (want to please despite medical orders – giving breakfast to a NPO patient for surgery).
DM – keep giving the information, it’s educational!
Steady Steve · June 28, 2026 at 10:05 am
Rake it in while you can, especially if the work load is low. And I agree with footintheforest, convert those FRN’s to hard money while the manipulators are holding the price down.
hh475 · June 29, 2026 at 12:16 pm
The problem with putting a lot of money in gold is that you are betting that an anomaly will happen. It usually doesn’t. Here’s a comparison of putting $500/month into gold vs SP500 index fund:
Starting in 1990 (36 years): gold: $1.74 million value (gain of $1.51 million)
S&P: $2.74 million, (gain of $2.25 million)
Starting in 2000 (26 years): gold: $936,000, ($777,000)
S&P: $942,000 ($783,000)
Starting in 2010 (16 years): gold: $256,000 ( $157,000)
S&P: $377,000 ($278,000)
The reason gold *almost* did as well as the index fund if you had started in 2000 was because of an anomaly in which gold was cheap in the very early 2000s, followed by the big recession in 2009. For those specific years, gold bugs looked smart. But even then, the index outperformed gold, though just by a tiny amount. Fort the rest of the past four decades not so much.
I can’t play market timing games that well.
JimmyPx · June 28, 2026 at 12:38 pm
Hi Divemedic,
I didn’t know this but many of the nurses at the hospital that I work at belong to a union (OPEIU Local 713) and they just ratified a new contract.
I was just curious of your thoughts on unions. I’m sure they were there when you were a fire fighter and now a nurse.
Divemedic · June 28, 2026 at 1:14 pm
I was in the union as a firefighter. It gave us a voice and prevented people from being fired for political reasons.
There are no unions for nurses in any of the hospitals in the area, nor would I wish to join one if there were.
TCK · June 29, 2026 at 5:22 am
“It gave us a voice and prevented people from being fired for political reasons. ”
That MIGHT have been the cause a long while ago (though I personally doubt it), but these days the commie shitlibs running the unions will be the first in line to demand someone be fired for politically incorrect wrong-think.
Divemedic · June 29, 2026 at 6:14 am
Naw. The union (at the local level) was run by the firefighters. My local was very much on the right. Half of our members were also members of the Fellowship of Christian Firefoghters. We had a couple of liberals, but that’s to be expected in a group that large.
oldvet50 · June 29, 2026 at 8:11 am
Very enlightening. Up to now, I assumed it was big pharma and greedy insurance companies that caused health care costs to skyrocket. The correct answer, as it turns out, is all of the above; everything connected to healthcare. The only solution is to get and stay healthy. Good on you for choosing a lucrative profession!
Divemedic · June 29, 2026 at 8:51 am
Hiring board certified, talented people who are not permitted to make any errors isn’t cheap.
The fact that people come to the ED for things like “I had diarrhea once this morning” or “My wife started coughing three hours ago” before expecting error free, fast, concierge level service isnt easy or cheap.
hh475 · June 29, 2026 at 12:28 pm
The old saw of “You can have it good. You can have it fast. You can have it cheap. Choose any two, but you can’t have all three,” remains true. Except, of course for socialized medicine, where the answer is “None of the above.”
Where I live in TN, the insurers are heavily pushing “Urgent Care” centers. Yesterday I fell and suffered a good sized scalp laceration. I was in, got my stitches, and got out in 30 minutes. That would have been a 5 hour ordeal at the local Enormous University Medical Center (EUMC).
Last year I had a log fall off my tractor onto my hand and suffered a degloving injury to my hand. I went to the local urgent care center. I was there for about 40 mins when they decided it was too big a job for them, so they called me in to EUMC ED. It took 30 mins to get triaged there, but they saw me in about 10 minutes after that.
Divemedic · June 29, 2026 at 1:10 pm
The new thing is a combo urgent care/ed. For simple things, you get charged the urgent care rate. More complex, you get the ed rate.
Comments are closed.