Nurse FIREs in 5 years

[clearview]

she made $630,000 in overtime  in less than 5 years between 2008 and 2013, plus her base salary of over $50,000/year too. she has since quit "—presumably for a life of comfort—"

http://www.newser.com/story/197450/prison-nurse-hit-ny-for-630k-in-overtime.html

"listed with the town of Haverstraw's assessor's office as owning a $443,000 home"

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/18/nurse-got-630000-in-ot-at-ny-prison/17525051/

http://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/westchester/2014/10/17/bedford-hills-prison-nurse-states-top-ot-earner/17458853/

[Imerz]

Some of the comments on the newser article were trying to call this lady out for fraud.  If you take her base salary / 51 weeks, she earns roughly $36/hr, which can escalates into $53+/hr in OT.  Oh, and most nurses/healthcare get OT after 32 hours...

Personal anecdote: I know a male nurse in southeaster SD who was earning $49/hour for an overnight shift a few weeks ago. How?  $22/hr base rate + overtime at 50% base + crisis pay due to lack of nurses available to take shifts.  It could totally happen...

[Primm]

Our OT rate is 1.5 for the first 4 hours a fortnight and then double time after that, and when you're working an overnight shift (1.25) at my base rate of ~$40 an hour that's $100 an hour. An extra 12 hour shift each fortnight and I take home ~$700. If she was doing several more than that then there's your legitimate overtime. As a nurse I doubt she was defrauding her employer, at least not on the amount of money she earned. Extra shifts equal overtime even if they're only 4 hours long.

[UnleashHell]

"she went 6 months without a day off"

yeah, so what. been there, done that.

and if they don;t want to pay overtime then create a system that lets you employ the right number of people for the job - instead of saying that you have a hiring freeze and  then paying people overtime.

fair play to the nurse.

[tofuchampion]

There's likely a shift differential, too.  I'm not a nurse (yet), just a CNA, and I get an extra $1.90/hr working overnight (7p-7a) shifts at a hospital.  I'm not sure what the nurses make, but their base pay is roughly 3x mine, so I assume their differential is proportional.  I also get $0.95/hr extra on weekends.  This is why I work nights, and most weekends.  :)

So you have her base pay, a shift diff, overtime, premiums for working during periods of short staffing... it can add up really quickly.

eta:  Just went on our staffing website and signed up for some extra shifts.  This was a motivating read, thanks!

[sobezen]

Hooray for her!  Kudos and great job!

[Gone Fishing]

As long as there is no fraud involved, that's pretty badass on her part.  I do share the quality of care concerns though.  Good thing I don't qualify for OT, or I might be inclined to work a lot more!  As it is, I work with folks that reduce their ROI by coming in early and leaving late just to show off.

[Primm]

Great for her and I fully support her working within the confines of her job, but for the record we don't want a ton of nurses working overtime.  The Institute of Medicine and the ANA have done studies that have confirmed nursing quality of care drops after 32-40 hrs/week.  So the ideal situation would be A) More nurses and B) hospitals/health systems not allowing their medical providers to work overtime.

Yes it does. Studies also show that there is a minimum nurse:patient ratio in every area after which care drops off.

So what do you do if one conflicts with the other? Do you allow your existing nurses to work overtime to fill the gaps, or work with lower staffing ratios?

A/ and B/ are idealistic pipe dreams in the current climate, and they're only going to get worse. There's a world wide shortage of skilled and experienced nurses, and hospitals are making it harder and harder to get acceptable work. More money has already been allocated towards educating new nurses but unfortunately they're being dropped into the current system of understaffing straight from university and are going on to do easier jobs like computer science and engineering (!). It's a real catch 22.

And then there's people like me, and the nurse in the article, who are working as many hours as possible at the moment and stashing money to leave the profession altogether, which isn't helping the situation. I don't know what the answer is, I hope maybe the legal teams will start insisting once enough cases get through the courts around substandard care due to understaffing and fatigued staff. I know that's not ideal, but at least that way the beancounters in the hospitals and the funding providers might start sitting up and taking notice, instead of just brushing us off.

[mamagoose]

I'm self-employed and often go months between taking a day off. Maybe the nurse actually liked her job?

[Beric01]

This is awesome - good for her!

I'd do crazy overtime as well if I got paid for it in order to FIRE early. Unfortunately as a salaried employee I get perhaps a 1% increase in wages if I increase my working hours from 40-60. Gives me little motivation for working longer hours other than wanting to get ahead in my job (I still have 8-9 years of work left, so I could get promotions/raises).