Alberta's Top Paid Nurse Earns $510,000

[WhiteTiger]

Staffing levels are the issue here. I could work a full shift every single day of the year if I hated myself that much.

[lazypucker]

My buddy's wife is a nurse, and I was told that if you have an 8-hr shift, you may have the opportunity to pick up another 8-hr shift right after if they are short-staffed. So it will be 16 consecutive hours. But the thing is that those 16 hours will be paid at OT rate, which is triple.

So work 16 hours straight will net you 48 hours of pay. Do this 3 times a week and take the rest off and you will be paid like 500 hours a month. Say the hourly rate of a nurse is $50, this translate to $25,000 per month....

I know nursing is a tough and demanding job, but that half-a-mil nurse must be really smart in figuring out how to maximize the system... Kudos to her/him.

[GGG]

I think the headline here does a disservice to the problem.

5 nurses earn more than 300k. So are likely individuals is special circumstances that would explain it, using loopholes to abuse the system or straight up fraud. That isn’t a problem worth reporting on.

Only 685 earn more than 150k which is about 50% extra income. So if a staffing /allocation of resources problem exists it exists in the people earning less than 150k.

This article is click baity and doesn’t address the real issue of overwork in general of of people working 50-60 hr weeks for long stretches.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Stillman16

One possible explanation I can think of here, is the worker MIGHT be a work to rule kind of person, and booked OT for every minute extra they “worked”.

In this type of union environment, if you work a certain minimum (say five minutes extra) it automatically would be rounded to the nearest 15 min (up). So on the odd shift, not a big deal, and most wouldn’t bother claiming it, but the work to rule would stretch a 2-3 min extra to 5 min to get the extra 15 min OT pay, and over a year could really add up!

I love how people are looking at a nurse making 500k thinking "she's screwing the company on 10 minutes for overtime".

Newsflash: That's incredibly small potatoes compared to the hundreds of hours he/she would have to work to reach this level of earnings. I don't care how much you abuse OT you'd never reach that level.

This is a staffing problem, not an individual problem. Wow.

[getbak]

The story contains a link to the Sunshine list, so you can look the person up. It looks like he has made over $200,000 per year every year since 2018 and has made increasingly more each year.

It gives no other context about location or specialties.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Public service retirement benefits and pensions are paid for life, even if you worked for only a few years. You’re an expense on the books until you die. In the private sector once you quit or are laid off, the employer doesn’t owe you another penny.

Only true if it's a DC pension which fair, is most private companies but there are companies in the private sector that have DB pensions and carry a liability. (Or that have now closed DB pensions they're still carrying liabilities for)

Even in the public sector, if you only worked for a few years, the "expense on the books" is not going to be large because you didn't accrue much pension benefit.

[Ashasx]

I believe Alberta's top paid nurse actually makes $9,250,000.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Ashasx

I believe Alberta's top paid nurse actually makes $9,250,000.

Talk about over paid.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by Lubicon

Is this the case? Honest question because I have heard the issue is the opposite. There are so many part time positions that it is making it unattractive to new nurses because it is difficult to find an actual FT position. Anecdotally my niece graduated last year from nursing and has not been successful in finding a FT position. Temporary contract work and working several position to make up enough hours for full time pay has been her career so far.

Story I heard is every bit as anecdotal as yours so who knows. But what I heard, after an interview with the chief of a large Calgary hospital, was essentially what I stated and they know it's a large issue.

Could be just that hospital though I guess. Dunno. My wife had a 0.5 and it was like pretty much gold because she had worked on the unit for a long time. She gave it up and all the other nurses were basically fighting to get it because there were so few available.

[Fuzz]

It kinda seems like if you agree to work part time, any shifts you pick up until the FTE hours should be payed at the same wage, not overtime. OT pay should only kick in after you reach FT hours. If everyone wants the 0.5 position just so they can work the same amount of hours, but get double for doing it, well, that kinda seems like someone done ####ed up making these contracts.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

A nurse making $510k in a year is indicative of a problem.

It's not a problem that they earned the money.

It's a problem that:
- a nurse working hard enough to make $510k a year is going to be completely wiped out every day, working at the limits of their physical and mental faculties on very, very little rest.
- patients are being looked after by a nurse who is not getting sufficient rest and may be prone to making mistakes.
- $510k a year -- which could hire ~6 RNs or ~8 LPNs and dramatically improve the resulting level of care -- is being spent on just one.

Having known a few nurses myself, Locke hit the nail on the head; nurses making deep six figures even half-way to the amount we're talking about are not doing it purposely and certainly are not enjoying it. Hell, the ones that don't even come close to this are overworked to death.

Nursing is a lot like many Public Professions, similar to Doctors and Teachers and some others.

These are people who engaged in this Profession because it appeals to their nature. Its less a career than it is a 'calling.'

This kind of thing takes good natured people and throws them into the meat grinder and just eviscerates what made them good at the job in the first place.

I agree with you, I'm not upset or incensed that a nurse made that kind of money, but its heavily indicative of a serious staffing problem or an administrative problem in terms of organizing staff.

The sheer volume of hours necessary is inherently indicative of a very serious problem.

And its not like: "Hahahaha! I make tons of money for nothing!"

These are people are sticking their hands into the filth and wading into the muck of humanity every single day for all of these hours...you can't keep that up forever. Its going to catch up to you.

And then what happens? You lose a passionate, experienced and dedicated medical professional to just plain old sheer burnout.

That is just bad policy all around. Its bad for the employee, its bad for the patients, its bad for the system.

Because your best people are the ones you're killing first.

I dont begrudge this Nurse for making that much money, but I think of the complete systemic failure that must have surrounded her for the circumstances to exist for this to happen and it absolutely concerns me.

Lets call a Spade a Spade here. That is not sustainable.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Public service retirement benefits and pensions are paid for life, even if you worked for only a few years. You’re an expense on the books until you die. In the private sector once you quit or are laid off, the employer doesn’t owe you another penny.

Not at all true. You have to reach a vesting period in most systems to gain benefit. If you leave before that, you get only what YOU paid in. You lose all the money paid in by the employer.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

It kinda seems like if you agree to work part time, any shifts you pick up until the FTE hours should be payed at the same wage, not overtime. OT pay should only kick in after you reach FT hours. If everyone wants the 0.5 position just so they can work the same amount of hours, but get double for doing it, well, that kinda seems like someone done ####ed up making these contracts.

Are part time or casual nurses actually being paid overtime prior to reaching the FTE hours?(I think that’s around 35 hour/week in that field)

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by lazypucker

My buddy's wife is a nurse, and I was told that if you have an 8-hr shift, you may have the opportunity to pick up another 8-hr shift right after if they are short-staffed. So it will be 16 consecutive hours. But the thing is that those 16 hours will be paid at OT rate, which is triple.

So work 16 hours straight will net you 48 hours of pay. Do this 3 times a week and take the rest off and you will be paid like 500 hours a month. Say the hourly rate of a nurse is $50, this translate to $25,000 per month....

This sounds wrong. I can’t see how an employee would be paid overtime for their regular hours simply for agreeing to work OT. Also I believe the OT rate for nurses is double time not triple time, that being the case the employee working a 16 hour shift would receive 8 hours regular and 8 hours double time, so 24 hours of pay total. What struck me as the biggest red flag while reading your example is that your friend’s wife used a regular 8 hour shift as her example when to my knowledge most nurses aren’t scheduled for 8 hour shifts.

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

This sounds wrong. I can’t see how an employee would be paid overtime for their regular hours simply for agreeing to work OT. Also I believe the OT rate for nurses is double time not triple time, that being the case the employee working a 16 hour shift would receive 8 hours regular and 8 hours double time, so 24 hours of pay total. What struck me as the biggest red flag while reading your example is that your friend’s wife used a regular 8 hour shift as her example when to my knowledge most nurses aren’t scheduled for 8 hour shifts.

If there's one thing I know from working in union environments (Well, any workplace really), it's that most people didn't actually know how the system worked. I've had to explain something as simple as pay period cut off to otherwise very smart people

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by btimbit

I've had to explain something as simple as pay period cut off to otherwise very smart people

I lol’d at that example because I literally had to explain the same thing to someone last week.

[Locke]

Its not really in the vein of the conversation, but there is nothing worse than an elderly parent talking to you after having coffee with their friends.

"Did you know that there is no point in working Overtime because the government takes it all? You're working for free! Oh! And that CPP is non-taxable because you already paid tax on it!!!"



None of those things are true.

What do they put in that coffee at the Casino? I might have to get some.

[DoubleF]

There's 168 hours in a week and the article is estimating about 115 hours a week. That's 7.5 hours remaining per day on commute, sleep etc. assuming everything else required by a human can be done at work (ie: eat, washroom, showers, online shopping etc.). Or if there's some other facet, then it's less than 115 hours a week, but it's still an insane number.

It'd be easy enough to audit internally whether there was some fraudulent hours involved. I'm just throwing out there that'd be some of the basics required to accomplish that $510K feat.

I also ballparked the numbers in the article. Based on the hours mentioned, you can achieve $510K at approximately $50 an hour (($55 x 37.5 x 52weeks) + ($55 x 2 OT rate x 77 OT hours week average x 52 weeks). But according to the agreement that someone posted, nurses can make over $50 an hour. I'm kinda confused how the article got their numbers. So if someone is making $55 an hour or $60 an hour, they can still do insane numbers, but seemingly much more human like working hours with even some room for the occasional days off.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by 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!

And yet if you think about it, a couple years of this, or even 75% of this would set someone up very well for the rest of the their life.

EDIT: I'm not suggesting this is a good idea, or the hours worked won't result in burnout, but how many people would sacrifice a few years with 75% of the hours and get a serious jump ahead on life?

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by Locke

"Did you know that there is no point in working Overtime because the government takes it all? You're working for free!.

When I was a financial planner I had to deal with this many, many times, while explaining progressive tax rates.