Alberta's Top Paid Nurse Earns $510,000

[T-Dog]

There is just so much wrong here. Is it even possible to work this many hours in a year? It's a prime example of how the public system is broken if you have nurses on the public payroll earing half a million dollar salaries.


http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmont...high-1.6900641

[PeteMoss]

It a paid by the hour job. They worked extra hours to get that pay.

Should they have more people hired so people can't work that much overtime - yes. But that's a bigger issue.

[Monahammer]

T-Dog, Did you even read the article? Yes, the system is broken, not because a person earned this much money though. They cannot staff enough nurses, so people have to work ridiculous quantities of OT, thus driving up the payroll.

From the article the person must have been putting in close to 70-80 hours a week on nights. 6x 12s with a little extra on the margins and a day off. Can't imagine anyone would like working that, and because nursing is typically some what of a passion career, my initial guess would be that someone felt obligated to continue that level of work.

[Fuzz]

Seems obvious what has happened, no? Massive shortages due to mismanagement have led to opportunities for OT. The problem isn't nurse overtime, it's govenrment failure.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Seems obvious what has happened, no? Massive shortages due to mismanagement have led to opportunities for OT. The problem isn't nurse overtime, it's govenrment failure.

This problem isn’t isolated to just the public healthcare industry either. Lots of private sector employers are paying out huge amounts of overtime to make up for shortages, but that information isn’t publicly available so it doesn’t usually get the same attention.

[Monahammer]

If anything, this should be an advertisement. You want to trade years of your life and virtually all your enjoyment/empathy for money? Well do we have an opportunity for you!

[Mr.Coffee]

The nursing union is preventing more 0.5 allocations for shifts. Many nurses are moms or young moms with families to support.

If they provided more part time jobs (not 0.1s or 0.8s, actual 50% time gigs), there’d be way more nurses and way less need for OT. From what I understand, it is the union not listening to its workers on this one.

[Slava]

An RN at the top of UNA's salary grid would have to work an average of 77 hours of overtime per week, every week, beyond a 37.5-hour work week, to earn $510,000 in a year, CBC News calculates.

I don't know...seems like there is something wrong here? The claim is this person averaged 114 hours of work per week?

[Locke]

I dont know what to tell you.

I havent seen $510K, but I have a number of Nurses as clients who are close to touching ~$300K.

But I can tell you from interacting with them...in my experience, they're not doing it on purpose and its not fun.

I've never asked the question bluntly, but from inference? I'd bet most of them would rather earn $100k/year over 10-20 years than $300-$500K/per year over 2 or 3.

Because after that its likely a complete and total burnout.

I distinctly remember my one client who is a Nurse, and an immigrant from Belarus, who made just shy of $300K this year and she looked and spoke like she was about to drop dead.

Its not all pushing paper and spinning in office chairs. A good number of my nurse clients made TONS of money over the last couple years, but its not always by choice.

That amount of work and OT is BRUTAL.

Its not good for their patients and aside from the money, its not good for the Nurses either.

It reminds me of an old client I used to have many years ago, I havent spoken to him in forever, but he had connections on off-shore oil rigs and his plan was to just make as much money as possible and then call it.

He made something like $4 million before he was 24. Just....pure work.

Yeah, everyone wants to get rich, but doing it by grinding out hours? It'll catch up to you.

This kid did it, but his hands looked like he masturbated a wood-chipper and he walked like he'd done 10 rounds with every gangster in Compton.

It looks flashy on a Tax Return or a news article but there are some serious drawbacks.

[monkey brewery]

Do cops next, CBC.

My buddy's girlfriend is a cop, and every time I hear about her, "triple OT" finds its way in the conversation.

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by monkey brewery

Do cops next, CBC.

My buddy's girlfriend is a cop, and every time I hear about her, "triple OT" finds its way in the conversation.

This one is much more interesting and IMO exceedingly more likely to have been abused.

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by Slava

I don't know...seems like there is something wrong here? The claim is this person averaged 114 hours of work per week?

Nightshift can reduce that significantly. It's not pleasant at all but it is achievable.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

Nightshift can reduce that significantly. It's not pleasant at all but it is achievable.

I'm not really that familiar with their wage setup, but how many hours are we looking at to get to that income? If CBC is in the ballpark, it's completely ridiculous both from the standpoint of the nurse, but also for the patients under their care.

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

This one is much more interesting and IMO exceedingly more likely to have been abused.

Triple is stat holidays only, normal ot is double

[The Yen Man]

I'm not saying nurses aren't overworked, but I don't doubt some of them are gaming the OT system somehow to maximize OT hours.

According to the article, the nurse who earned $510K would have to work 37.5 hours plus 77 additional hours on AVERAGE to hit that. That would mean on average, that nurse worked 16.5 hours a day for 7 days straight for 52 weeks straight. Does that even sound possible?

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

According to the article, the nurse who earned $510K would have to work 37.5 hours plus 77 additional hours on AVERAGE to hit that. That would mean on average, that nurse worked 16.5 hours a day for 7 days straight for 52 weeks straight. Does that even sound possible?

No it doesn’t.

[Burninator]

The line under that line says this.

"Nurses can also earn premiums working nights, weekends and statutory holidays, and their pay can be more depending whether they have a specialty or if they work in a remote location."

Must be a factor here?

[The Yen Man]

I guess, but it still sounds highly dubious. I know this is anecdotal, but I've got a couple nurse friends who say it's not that hard to be "generous" in logging your OT hours. Not sure what actually entails, but you would hope someone audits the OT tracking system.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

I'm not saying nurses aren't overworked, but I don't doubt some of them are gaming the OT system somehow to maximize OT hours.

According to the article, the nurse who earned $510K would have to work 37.5 hours plus 77 additional hours on AVERAGE to hit that. That would mean on average, that nurse worked 16.5 hours a day for 7 days straight for 52 weeks straight. Does that even sound possible?

There are also ways to manipulate the call system. She probably got paid a lot of hours being on call for hours she didn't work.

If you look at the actual stats, there were only 22 nurses earning $250k or more, and only 685 nurses earning more than $150k. So it's not a widespread thing, as there are about 30,000 RNs in Alberta.

This sounds a lot like a few nurses being crafty and ending up in favorable positions to earn way more than they actually work. It was likely a few specific nurses in high demand and understaffed wards getting all the favorable shifts, overtime, and call shifts to make this possible. For example, if you know that an on call shift is not likely to receive an actual call, you could book that and add it to your already overtime guaranteed schedule.

[Stillman16]

Originally Posted by btimbit

Triple is stat holidays only, normal ot is double

This is technically correct, but the “triple” also includes the stat pay that EVERYONE that works in Canada is entitled to.

So it’s still only double time really, as compensation for working while the majority of people are home enjoying time with family (Christmas, Easter, Family Day, etc).

Many jobs like this one would, typically, allow a worker having a day off on a holiday, to bank the stat time, to take it off at a later date, since the worker is needed on their regular shift rotation. However, if the worker is unable to use the stat time they bank, or choose to take it in extra pay, it would also inflate their annual earnings.

I myself, in a different field, but similar union environment, had 80 hours of banked stat time I wasn’t able to use the previous year (due to lack of staff, increased co-worker sick time, etc), and it was paid out, which bumped my perceived salary….I prefer to have the time off….but during the pandemic, not much was happening anyway I guess.

Also, after reading the article, it appears it was an immigrant nurse, which from my personal observances at my work place, coincides as the immigrants are far more eager to accept the OT (especially in excess) than the Canadian raised employees….the Canadian raised ones may not accept much if any, leaving the eager ones even more to take.