whats the difference between a registered nurse and a nurse practitioner?
A world of a difference. I'll explain what I know from living here in New York City. My information comes from two sources. First, many years back, I served as an accountant directly servicing one of the largest hospital systems in NYC and got to learn a lot about qualifications and pay scales that are determined by level of training. Second, my brother is a physician (gastroenterologist) at New York Presbyterian Hospital and his wife (who he met at the job decades ago) is a Nurse Practitioner.
To be a registered nurse, you can start with a simple associates degree in nursing from a local college/university. You do 2-3yrs, get an associate degree, pass some national board certification exam and then have a legal right to work as an RN. In NYC, a fresh RN out of school can start making as much as $85-95k per year for working a day-shift job where they come in 3 days of the week and work 12-hour days, for a total of 36 hours per week. That constitutes a full-time job for them. If they get a night shift job, working the same amount of weekly hours, because it is a nighttime position, they can start as high as $100-$115k per year. At the level of RN, they can also start with a bachelor's degree instead and get as high as a masters or PhD, while still practicing as an RN on a hospital floor mostly administering medications and doing other forms of treatments for patients.
To become a nurse practitioner, the individual would have to get a bachelor's degree in nursing, board certification, practice as a registered nurse for at least 2-3 years of actual work as an RN before they can apply to the nurse practitioner School, which are essentially Masters or doctorate degree programs that at the minimum can be completed in as little as 3 - 4 years. So to become a nurse practitioner, the total number of years needed are about 7-8 when you realize that it's four years to obtain a bachelor's degree and then another 3 - 4 years to either get a Masters or doctorate degree as a nurse practitioner.
Their scope of practice is widely different than that of a registered nurse. A registered nurse can only work on a hospital floor and administer medications to patients that are order/prescribed by a medical provider. A medical provider in New York City is considered to be anyone who is either a physician, nurse practitioner or physician assistant. Any of those 3 distinct groups of individuals have the legal right to prescribe medications throughout the entire United States including controlled substances. A nurse practitioner has the legal right in NY state to open an independent medical clinic where they serve as the sole medical provider and can have staff members that work for them (RNs, technicians, clerks etc). A Nurse Practitioner can prescribe anywhere in the USA and to anyone, so as long as the person being prescribed to is a patient. Nurse Practitioners can work in most specialities I believe, but it is probably also determined by their level of training.
In terms of what nurse practitioners make in New York City for instance, keeping in mind that the cost of living in New York City is incredibly high, what I can tell you is that circa 2010, while serving as an accountant for one of the largest Hospital Systems in the state, they were starting nurse practitioners at about $140,000 per year. As of recent, (today) I looked at what the starting rates are at present at these large private hospitals in New York City and it is more like $165,000 per year to start and can go as high as $200,000 if not higher. Again, what they pay you is also determined by the number of years of experience that you have and the distinct discipline that you're working in. For instance, if you work at an Internal Medicine division, you will probably get a on the lower end. If you work in emergency medicine or Critical Care Medicine, you will get paid on the higher end of the scale.
I think that for those that can stomach the amount of time necessary to become these types of medical providers, it is a really good deal. I remember reviewing the various salaries for all the different types of providers including physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners throughout the years in this hospital system and I was floored and highly impressed by how much these people made. Keep in mind though that they typically exchange tremendous amount of hours of their life in order to make their salaries and the amount of cerebral work that they do is highly anxiety inducing.
"
1"
