Nursing is a sought-after job role that many pursue for its level of job security and potential for upward career mobility. However, the field of nursing is broad, and many factors can affect the salary that one can earn as a nurse.
Those interested in pursuing a career as a nurse in South Florida, along with those with an interest in the state of healthcare in Florida, can benefit from gaining a deeper understanding of the salary landscape for nurses.
To get a truly accurate gauge of the nursing salary landscape in South Florida, it’s important to understand the various types of nursing roles. Each of these roles comes with its own specific duties and requirements, making them vary in terms of nursing salary potential.
Here are some of the most popular nursing roles and the salaries one can expect from stepping into these roles.
Registered Nurse
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the annual median income of American registered nurses was $77,600 per year. In the state of Florida, the BLS notes that registered nurses make a little more than their average American counterparts, commanding an annual median wage of $79,910 as of 2022.
For many budding professionals exploring nursing roles, the role of a registered nurse is attractive for several reasons. In addition to being in a secure job role with an impressive salary, the educational requirements and qualifications required to become one are less than some other, more advanced nursing roles.
Nurse Practitioner
Unlike their registered nurse counterparts, nurse practitioners are advanced nurses who have undergone many years of schooling and training — with many holding a Doctorate in Nursing. The BLS estimates that the median salary for nurse practitioners in 2022 was $124,680.
In Florida, the BLS reports that the median salary for nurse practitioners was noticeably less, with estimates coming in at $110,310 for Floridian nurse practitioners.
Given the fact that nurse practitioners in Florida command lower salaries than the national average for nurse practitioners, many may be incentivized to pursue this career in other states or pursue another nursing role altogether in South Florida.
Travel Nurse
According to the job search site Indeed, the average base salary for travel nurses in the United States is $2,237 per week. However, it can be difficult to determine exactly how much travel nurses make in a year, as many work contract roles that differ in length and can sometimes be hard to find.
That being said, travel nurses have the opportunity to command an incredibly high salary if they stay busy and work throughout the year. However, given the nature of their work, travel nurses in South Florida will likely have to travel to various regions throughout the country to command a lucrative salary.
Understanding Various Nursing Settings and How They Affect Salaries
Much like nursing salaries can vary based on specialty and geographic location, salaries can also differ depending on which type of work environment nurses work in. As such, to gain an accurate understanding of the nursing salary landscape in South Florida, it’s critical to understand how different settings affect the salary potential for nurses.
Hospitals
For many nursing roles, hospitals are the places where one can command the highest salaries. However, among hospitals, different factors can affect the earning potential of nurses. Some of these factors include:
- Funding: The more money a medical facility has at its disposal, the better it is able to pay its employees. As such, hospitals with better funding often pay their healthcare workers better wages.
- Worker shortages: In many hospitals throughout the country, healthcare worker shortages are a constant problem. As a way to remedy this challenge, many healthcare facilities offer pay bumps to nurses in order to incentivize them to work for them.
- Location: Many rural areas in the United States struggle with finding healthcare workers to fill their medical facilities. Consequently, many rural facilities offer higher salaries than their more urban medical facility counterparts.
Educational Settings
While many nurses aspire to work with patients in environments such as hospitals and clinics, others find themselves better suited to teaching. For these nurses, educational settings can impact salaries as well as their day-to-day work-related duties.
Typically, nurses of all specialties will do less working in educational settings than they would in work environments such as hospitals. However, like all roles, this can vary, and nurse educators have the potential to command higher salaries depending on factors such as their institution’s funding, their level of seniority in their department, and their area of expertise.
The Nursing Field is Ripe with Opportunities for Professionals in South Florida
Though it is a large, broad, and varied field, there’s no shortage of fulfilling and secure professional career paths in nursing for South Floridians. From stepping into the secure role of a registered nurse to pursuing a career of exploration as a travel nurse, there is an abundant number of options for young professionals in the nursing field.
As time goes on, it’s likely that many nursing roles in South Florida will continue to grow in demand and offer more ripe opportunities for aspiring healthcare workers.
