Salaries for advanced practice nurses rise, but don't come close to doc pay

The good news keeps coming for advanced practice registered nurses.

In addition to the Department of Veterans Affairs’ final decision Tuesday to expand the scope of practice for most APRNs who work for the agency, a new salary survey finds that the annual income for those professionals is also on the rise.

The 2016 Medscape APRN Salary Survey reports that the average annual income for all APRNs in 2015 was $109,000, an increase of 2.8% or $3,000 compared to last year’s survey.

It’s also a big difference in income compared to registered nurses, who earned an average of $79,000, and primary care physicians, who reported an average 4% increase in compensation to more than $250,000 in a salary survey released this spring.

The APRN salary survey is based on the responses of more than 3,000 APRNs, including certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs), nurse practitioners (NPs), clinical nurse specialists and nurse midwives.

Survey respondents tended to be older (ages 45 or older), work full-time, and have been in practice for at least 21 years. They also worked in diverse settings. Most CRNAs work in acute care hospitals, while only 17 percent of nurse practitioners said they work in hospitals. Other work settings included skilled nursing facilities or long-term care, home health, school or college health services, public or occupational health, and military or government healthcare settings.

CRNAs earnings were the highest, with a reported average income of $176,000.

Other highlights from the survey:

• Most APRNs (65%) regularly work overtime. CRNAs reported they worked 1 to 5 hours overtime and nurse midwives (40%) typically worked more than 10 overtime hours.
• Salaried APRNs were almost as likely as hourly APRNs to routinely work overtime hours.
• The more experience an APRN, the higher salary but only for a few years. Salaries flatten after a period of years, the report found, which may be due to a wage ceiling.
• Average hourly earnings for part-time and per-diem APRNs ranged from $51 per hour for NPs to $99 per hour for nurse anesthetists.
• Male APRNs reported higher annual salaries on average than their female counterparts. Indeed, men outearned women in every category, according to the report, by $21,000 for CRNAs and $11,000 for NPs, clinical nurse specialists and nurse midwives combined. Some of the pay differential is due to the amount of overtime worked. Men tended to work more overtime than women (58% vs. 49%) and work more hours each week (67% of men said they worked six or more hours weekly compared to 57% of women).
• Sixty-three percent of full-time APRNs say they are fairly compensated for their work.