Registered Nurse Benefits

Registered Nurse Benefits

Most nurses forget to look at what registered nurse benefits can add up to when they evaluate a job offer. It might surprise you to know that those registered nurse benefits can add up to a substantial difference in take home pay and other perks. While these are not all of the nurse benefits a registered nurse may have these are the most common.

Vacation

Lets start with vacation accrual. The average registered nurse salary nationally is $24.63 per hour according to the Department of Labor; Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2003.

If you are a nurse working 40 hours per week and you earn two weeks per year of paid vacation time that’s equal to 80 hours. 80 X 24.63 = $1970.64

If you earn four weeks of paid vacation that equals 160 hours. 160 X 24.63 = $3940.80

Sick Time

Most nurses earn approximately 40 hours per year of sick time. 40 X 24.63 = $985.20

Some employers allow you to accumulate as much as 800-1000 hours of banked sick time. Its sort of like having a short term disability program that reimburses you at 100% of your wages for one week up to a potential of twenty five weeks. Assume you work for a middle of the road employer who only lets you bank 480 hours or 12 weeks. That’s three months worth of short term disability that you can bank on. 480 X 24.63 = $11822.40

Medical/Vision/Dental

This is one registered nurse benefit that is all over the map. Some employers pay 100% for the employee and nothing for dependent coverage. Others pay a portion of the dependent coverage. High deductible plans, low deductible plans, Preferred Provider Organizations (PPO), HMO’s and more. The national average cost of medical premiums is approximately $500 per month per employee. $500 X 12 = $6000

Employee Health

While its certainly not the family oriented atmosphere of yesteryear many hospitals will include approximately $200 worth of free lab work which you can have done annually. These tests can include PSA, Urine analysis, complete blood count and a comprehensive chemical panel. Some will even give you free chest ex-rays and EKG tracings. Having the tests interpreted by a medical doctor is usually not included.

Education

An often overlooked registered nurse benefit is education dollars. Most hospitals pay 100% of the mandatory education required for your job. This can include CPR, ACLS, PALS, TNCC and of course JCAHO mandated competencies. These education dollars for the average nurse salary can add up when you talk books, tuition and hours paid. Assuming approximately 40 hours per year you will be compensated the equivalent of $985.20 in education dollars.

Holiday Pay

The average number of paid holidays seems to approximately 6. This adds up to approximately 48 paid hours per year for a benefit of $1182.24 extra per year. Of course, many nurses wind up working the holidays for an additional premium of being paid time and one-half for working the holiday. For some that's not considered a benefit.

Retirement Plans

There are generally two types of retirement plans. One is the old style plan where you contribute nothing and the company puts in the money every month to a pension plan. These plans are virtually non-existent for nursing so I will talk about the second type of plan called a 401K or 403B retirement savings plan. If you work at a hospital that offers this benefit be sure to find out how much they will match your contribution and what it takes to be vested or have 100% of the money be yours to keep. Some companies will match your contribution up to 6-7% of your base wages. This registered nurse benefit can be worth up to $3586.13 per year deposited into your tax deferred retirement savings account.

Social Security

Beleive it or not this is a benefit. Because in addition to the hefty 6.7% that you pay for social security your employer is contributing a matching amount of approximately 6.7%. Kinda hard to believe that social security is going broke isn't it? Assuming you worked 2080 hours per year and earned the average wage of $24.63 that would be: (2080 X 24.63)X.067 = $3432.43

Benefit Totals

Assuming a conservative estimate these benefits can add up to over $14,900 on the lower end and well over $24,000 on the upper end of the scale. One popular benefit and wages estimator site placed the median benefits at over $20,400 for a typical western medium sized community. So, the next time you size up a registered nurse salary offer be sure to ask about the benefits too.