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Comment by iamflimflam1 | Hacker News Reader

Health care professional covers a huge range of people. This is not in any way meant to dismiss the incredible hard work that these people do, but health care is a notoriously low paid profession and many people have little to no qualifications. If you are assuming the “health care professional” equates to informed and well trained then I have a bridge that you might be interested in…

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Every profession has a spectrum of quality of worker. Any health care professional is more experienced than me. What does it hurt to follow-up for clarity? Her rationale may be completely unconvincing and that's fine I can then ignore it. Or she might tell me something interesting I can keep in mind and see if it gets corroborated by other sources.

> health care is a notoriously low paid profession

Where is that, exactly? Because it certainly isn’t in the US.

Surgeons and specialists are high paid. Regular physicians not so much. Nurses are not at all highly paid.

Median annual wage for a Registered Nurse in the US is $81K. That is way higher than the national average worker income of only $54K.

https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291141.htm

True, but the current national income level is so poor that it's threatening to actually crack the country, as people who recognize what a raw deal they've been dealt get less and less interested in perpetuating this system.

We should probably stop comparing incomes to the global mean to decide if they're "fair" or "correct."

As a nurse I make $100/hr.

Try again.

Since you are closer to the profession, do you think that wage is at all typical of a nurse or are you in a specialized area that pays higher? Just trying to understand what level of compensation is really happening.

Glad to hear it, but your income is way past the 90th-percentile for nurses in the US. The 90th is something closer to half that number.

That is surprising and does not track with what I have heard from other nurses. Are you in a specialized unit with extra care or something?

You must be in California.. in many states, RNs are making more like $15/hr and BSNs closer to $20-$25/hr.

No, I’m not. Nor am I in any of the other high paying states you might name.

You are a travel nurse?

In the UK nurses appear to start around £22K https://www.nurses.co.uk/careers-hub/nursing-pay-guide/

It depends where in healthcare.

Geriatric nurses tend to not get paid well, but resident nurses in hospitals do.

It’s a wide field.

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