Let’s Talk Nurse Practitioner Salaries
Many nurse practitioner students and nurses contemplating becoming a nurse practitioner often wonder what a realistic salary would look like once they become a full-fledged nurse practitioner. After all, it’s reasonable to want to know what their return on their educational investment will be. Many factors will have an impact on salary. Factors include geographic location, specialty, years experience and private practice versus hospital-based.
A few good resources to check out are Advance for NPs & PAs Salary Survey, the AANP National NP Compensation Survey and salary.com. After checking out these resources, you may find some pretty wide ranges of compensation. This can be attributed in part to the number of respondents and methodology of gathering the data. One option is to average the salary data that is specific to your region and practice to try to get a good idea or at least a range.
One theme that I’ve heard frequently among registered nurses is that they are making (or will make) more money in that role than they would as a nurse practitioner. While this may be true in some instances, it is really hard to compare the two different roles to one another. Most NPs that I have spoken to did not pursue the extra education and training for a large financial payoff. For many, being an NP is about being to diagnose and implement interventions for their patients within a collaborative yet autonomous environment.
One troubling trend that seems to be consistent with nurse practitioners and physicians alike is the lower compensation for jobs in primary care-type settings. This however, hasn’t seemed to keep NPs away from primary care though some purport that the majority of NPs end up in specialty care. This just isn’t true. When you look at the number of NPs practicing women’s health, school-based health, correctional, occupational, and community based health, these make up the majority of jobs that NPs are in. As greater emphasis is being placed on primary care with the Affordable Care Act, we are hopeful that those in primary care will find parity with the specialty counterparts.
So how much will a nurse practitioner make? I’ve seen hourly rates range from $37 – $60/hour. Yearly salaries can be from the mid $70′s to over $100k. Other factors to consider beyond a salary are benefits including paid time off, continuing education money, licensing/malpractice reimbursement, and health insurance coverage. In many cases, these benefits are negotiable and need to be the best fit for your particular situation and circumstance. For instance, you may not need health insurance coverage since your spouse has coverage. This might be a good place to negotiate a higher dollar amount in lieu of the health insurance coverage.
It may seem tempting to go after the job with the highest salary. However, there are many other factors that may ensure a better fit beyond money. Good luck negotiating.
