Recruiting and retaining great nursing staff are challenges for many surgery centers and hospitals across the U.S.
In some communities, ASCs struggle to compete with hospitals offering huge bonuses and pay hikes during the pandemic. Administrators tout the ASC work schedules — no nights or weekends — as a perk, and can be more flexible with part-time work to attract talented nurses.
Here are eight notes on the current nursing landscape.
1. The average hourly wage for full-time registered nurses is $40. Part-time RNs earn $42 per hour on average, according to Medscape.
2. Salaried RNs earn $91,000 per year on average, while hourly RNs report average annual compensation of $78,000, according to Medscape.
3. The average income for RNs at hospital-based outpatient facilities is $83,000, compared to $76,000 at a nonhospital-based medical office, according to Medscape.
4. In the first nine months of 2021, annual nurse salary without bonuses grew 4 percent to $81,376, according to Premier healthcare consultants and reported in The Wall Street Journal.
5. Fifty-five percent of RNs don't think they are fairly compensated, according to Medscape.
6. Nurse turnover rates are about 22 percent in 2021, up from 18 percent in 2019, according to Premier.
7. More than 50,000 RNs are expected to retire in 2022, according to the American Nurses Association.
8. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the U.S. will need 1.1 million new RNs to meet the needs of Americans.