CNAs in your state get paid very well. According to the national average, top tier CNAs get paid $15.95 per hour while median pay is only $12.30
SOURCE I live in California where the cost of living is much higher than in Oregon and your average CNA only makes $30k per year. In the city I grew up in (Visalia, CA) the average RN's pay is only $55k per year starting out. That's well below your $80k in Oregon, the national average, or state average of California
SOURCE. Not quite sure where you're getting your information but most CNAs I know that live around the nation would be very happy to be making $15 an hour because most are getting $10-13 even after having 5-10 years experience.
You should also read up on comparing salaries of RNs nation wide before spouting what you are saying about them. Where you live (Oregon) has a low cost of living yet nurses are one of the highest paid there. If you view
this SOURCE you'll see that the other states that are higher/as high for RNs in the nation are Hawaii, California, and Massachusetts which all have very high costs of living and then Alaska which has the pay it does because the NEED for nurses is so high because nobody wants to live there.
To obtain your RN you only need to have an associates degree. To do any form of nursing management you have to have your BSN. Now what a hospital requires is completely besides the point as some require just your AA and others require your BSN even for entry level RN jobs. Most states even offer what's referred to as a diploma program for RNs but those are pretty shitty if you ask my opinion because they are only good for the one hospital you receive your training from. It does not carry over to another facility nor does it allow you to go to another state to work as an RN.
You know @
Celista you have been someone I've come to respect on these forums as you have seemed very genuine and sincere in your posts. The more and more you post about nurses it makes me cringe. I'm not sure if you are coming from a stance of ignorance on what nurses actually do for you, biased because you had a bad experience with one, or just plain jealousy that an RN only has to get a 2 year degree to make a living for themselves while you had to fork out $40-60k in schooling to get a BA for your job.
I will educate you on a few things here though. First is what nurses actually do for you in the medical field. Your nurse is the person who is responsible for most of your care while in a hospital outside of having a surgery and even then your nurse is who actually cares for you once you are out of surgery. Doctors don't push meds. Doctors don't do most of the treatments. Doctors don't spend more than maybe 10-15 minutes with you a day if you're lucky. Your nurse is who looks after you. Your nurse is who calls the doctor who gives him/her phone orders for what treatment to give to you if your condition changes. If you code while in the hospital, you know who's responsible for saving your life? That's right a NURSE is. Almost every single hospital has a code team and it is 100% nurses. Nurses follow protocol and get you alive. This is both the RN and CNA that will be bringing your ass back to life not a doctor. I don't know what bad experience you had with a nurse that makes you hate them as much as you do but I am personally offended by your posts about nurses I've seen on here. That is MY profession as well as most of my family's profession.
You may think that nurses are overpaid and that they don't go through enough training in your eyes to constitute their pay but let me tell you this. That teacher making less money than a RN who "only" had to go to school for 2 years isn't saving lives literally on a daily basis. That secretary at an office isn't having to do 20-50 continuing education hours (must be done OUTSIDE of work too btw on your own time) every single year in order to keep your license like a nurse does. That chef that went to culinary school isn't going to kill someone if he messes up his dish (and if he does a NURSE can help save the life of the person he gave a food allergy ingredient to).
This is where I have a lot of issues with you on. You seem to project other people's choice in their schooling with how much you feel they should be making. Do you realize how many Starbucks baristas have an Bachelor's/Masters in English, philosophy, History, or other "useless" majors? There's quite a few of them. The reason for this is the usefulness of the major while looking for a job. If you don't want to teach English, philosophy, or history then there are very few jobs out there to make use of your degree. Basically those people wasted their money on a degree that won't do shit for them other than look good hanging on their wall. Yet you complain about nurses only needing a 2 year degree and making a good living. Should everyone be paid according to the amount of school they completed? If so, I think you should tell Mark Zuckerberg he needs to give up his billions since he dropped out of college his sophomore year. Maybe you should tell Bill Gates he needs to get a more education-appropriate paying job since he too dropped out of Harvard during his sophomore year of college. I guess Steve Jobs's family should donate all his money to charity since he too dropped out of college and never got a degree. Just because you see receptionists at your vet clinic making $12 a hour while holding master's degrees doesn't mean shit. If they have a masters in biology as you claim, they should probably try looking for a better job than being a receptionist. I believe you when you say they have a masters in English because, well as I said above, there aren't many jobs out there outside of teaching English that utilize a degree (even masters or PhD) in English.