Guest Post - When Nurses Earn More than Doctors

The medical profession is normally seen to be altruistic, what with doctors and nurses coming across as saviors who eliminate pain and suffering and help cure diseases and ailments. Nurses have always been viewed in the supporting role and never as part of the main act, helping to carry out the treatment rather than providing it themselves. Of late though, the spotlight has shifted to nurses in some specialties, and there’s been a lot of bickering and arguments doing the rounds about the fact that some kinds of nurses are now earning much more than some kinds of doctors.

Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNA), who are qualified to anesthetize patients during surgeries, are now earning an average of $185,000, a figure that’s much higher than the $172,000 earned by family practice physicians and the $176,000 taken home by internists, according to data released by recruitment and staffing firm Merritt Hawkins & Associates.

Are doctors, by virtue of having gone to medical school and completed four years of intense education coupled with one year of residency, deserving of a higher salary than nurses? Are there not nurses who have a similar level of educational and practical experience? Advanced nurses including clinical specialists, nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives and nurse practitioners are certified and hold at least one graduate degree. Their experience in the medical field is also advanced and long standing.

But because of the perception that a nurse is just a nurse and never will be a doctor, there is always the discrimination that a nurse cannot do the things a doctor does with the same amount of effectiveness. There is still a raging controversy going on about the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree open to nurse practitioners who have completed a graduate degree and which qualifies them to provide fully accountable patient care across all settings, with some doctors arguing that no amount of training or education is enough to prepare nurses to practice medicine without the supervision of a licensed medical practitioner.

Amidst all these advancements in education and the corresponding arguments, there’s just one thing that remains constant – the prejudices that rule, and ultimately ruin us.

thanks to Sarah Scrafford for this guest post.

This article is contributed by Sarah Scrafford, who regularly writes on the subject of Online Geriatric Nursing Programs. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com.