Yeah, hard pass. Nursing is a hardcore meat grinder, with companies worse than Uber taking advantage of nurses with algorithmic pricing scams, including credit checks to lowball. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/21/healthcare-n... And the real money at all is in RN. There's a reason the LPN is known as "low paid nurse". I'd rather head into the trades than nursing.
> And the real money at all is in RN.
When people refer to nurses, they mean RN's, typically.
And yes, don't become an LPN or anything less than an RN.
> TC pushes into mid/high 100's a few years in Maybe in California. I don't think that's the case in most states, unless you're doing a ton of overtime. I know someone who makes $130K/year in my state, which is amongst the top paying states. Has over a decade of experience.
I suggest you look at where nurses unions are nationwide, and their collective bargaining agreements! Nurse unions aren't just in blue states named California.
I'm a male healthcare worker (cardiac sonographer), and even though there are a lot more women, there were never any barriers for me because of my gender. If there's a shortage, it's because employers need to pay more, same as every other labor "shortage." Nursing is in demand everywhere, and not everyone has what it takes to do their work. If they could be making more money somewhere else, that's where they'll go. A…
Came here to say this. So many of my friends are male nurses. The thing that keeps them from sticking around is the pay. There's only so much crap you can take (literal and metaphorical) for a terrible salary. My housemate worked at UNC here in North Carolina. Not only was his pay terrible, he had to pay for on-campus parking. And if there was a sports game, he wasn't allowed to use the parking lot (having to park substantially further away and take a shuttle).
The people running the system are so completely disconnected from the experience of being a nurse that they're destroying the industry from the top down.
I suggest you look at where nurses unions are nationwide, and their collective bargaining agreements! Nurse unions aren't just in blue states named California.
The $130K person is covered by a union.
Excluding a NP path ($200k+ within a decade of RN licensure if you want it), and factoring in shortages - RN as a team lead makes ~$130k w/ ~4-5 yrs per the CBA I know of. That's without overtime or nights, without a new CBA factoring in the 2020's inflation and shortages after COVID era departures.
NP further swings the math, to include the tuition costs baked in from a cheap in-state school, employer tuition support, and specializing in demand areas like psych.
I’m actually taking prerequisites at a local cc to start an accelerated BS in nursing. Feels like one of the few jobs that’s still going to be in demand.
There's also plumbing, a/c and electrical work... general repairman stuff, etc. Assuming you're okay working hands on and potentially in more stressful environments (weather). I'm largely with Mike Rowe on this one... it's been a shame the level that people have not been directed into more vocational fields and the level of skilled labor shortages as a result. Higher education has largely been self-serving, not commu…
> They could simply ban medical institutions from mandating treatments for staff… Sorry, but if you want to take care of patients, you don't get to risk their lives unnecesssarily by refusing a flu shot.
There are lot of assumptions in that statement which may not be scientifically valid. Even if, the patient's life should not outweigh the medico's own. In a case where a medico choose that, they must choose to risk their life for a patient. The choice over ones life span ought not to rest with one's pay master as it does in American medicine.
> There are lot of assumptions in that statement which may not be scientifically valid.
Uh huh.
> Even if, the patient's life should not outweigh the medico's own.
Their desire not to get a minor vaccination should not outweigh the survival of the person under their care.
I'm a male healthcare worker (cardiac sonographer), and even though there are a lot more women, there were never any barriers for me because of my gender. If there's a shortage, it's because employers need to pay more, same as every other labor "shortage." Nursing is in demand everywhere, and not everyone has what it takes to do their work. If they could be making more money somewhere else, that's where they'll go. A…
It's kind of wild that our system seems to be specifically set up to exploit people who care.
Sociopath who views people as just a barrier to their goals? Promotion to CEO, billion dollar bonus. Millions of tax dollars spent to bail you out of trouble.
Empathetic person willing to literally put your body on the line for other? Shit pay, shit hours, one unlucky break away from destitution.
What's even crazier is the majority of Americans seem to like it this way.
You have to actually like the work though. It's one thing just to recognize that it's a good career with a lot of security and good pay. But if you don't actually like the work, i.e taking care of people when they're at their worst, then you are going to be 100% miserable within 5 years and looking for another career change.
After decades of clicking on different spots on screens and keyboards, the real stress in exchange for that, and now your peers in AI companies have found a way to unemploy you - there's a lot to like with hands on care that does something tangible that tech rarely does.
People you tend to for months or years dying on you gets old really fast though. In my family, the 5 doctors are still working (or kept working until retirement), of the 8 PT, only one isn't working as a PT, but of the 4 nurses only one is still working (she's getting a psych speciality), the other all went another way. Granted, we're not in the US where the nurses are paid more, but the reason to stop wasn't the pay but the moral toll.
I have been wondering how long it would start to take before historically female roles would start courting men the way STEM has been courting women the last couple of decades After years of "why are men dropping out of the workforce" articles it seems we finally are seeing some people come to their senses that yes, you do actually still have to "court" men to enter different careers to make it seem like appealing wo…
These kinds of programs have existed for decades. You've been wondering about that not because these programs weren't there but because you weren't looking for them. There are a lot of good reasons why we want more men in nursing. For personal reasons some patients may respond better to interactions with men. Additionally men being on average larger and stronger then women is an advantage in a society with many overw…
> You've been wondering about that not because these programs weren't there but because you weren't looking for them
I wasn't looking for grants as a woman in compsci either, but I sure heard about those
> There are a lot of good reasons why we want more men in nursing.
The issue for doctors isn't medical school but the bottleneck is residency slots available post graduation. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12256077/
That's an excellent link for getting down into the details. Thanks for posting it. > This editorial argues that the long-standing cap on residency slots, originating with the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, is the key structural constraint throttling the U.S. physician workforce. > In the 1990s, influential groups like the American Medical Association (AMA) and Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) had become con…