Do Nurses Get Free Food?

I saw a news article the other day which had a health policy expert discussing if nurses should get more money for meals. The idea was that nurses should be paid extra for their lunch.

This lead me to write this blog post about nurses and weather or not they get free food. I’ve previously covered the conundrum where most nurses are overweight. As i discuss later in this article, one improvement hospitals might make is to provide healthy and free meals for staff. Organic salads, healthy whole food options, and other foods that can improve staff health and well being.

 

 

First, What Nurse Are We Talking About?

When you use the phrase nurse, you need to know what you are talking about. There are RNs and LPNs and CNAs and NPs. All of these are nurses, but not all of them are what people commonly call a nurse.

A certified nursing assistant will normally be on staff and due the duties of the RN. Registered Nurses have seniority and can delegate tasks to their CNAs.

LPNs also do the role of a nurse, except they are paid less. Many clinics and rest homes and other institutions take LPNs on board because their salary is less than that of a nurse and they can perform the same roles and have the same skill sets. They have less training than a RN.

You will normally only see RNs in hospitals due to the incredible cost of hiring a nurse. A staff RN makes 100k a year in most major cities (in areas such as New Jersey and New York, they make higher salaries–with NYC nurses making upwards of 115 dollars an hour.).

So, when you say a Nurse, you need to be specific.

CNAs and LPNs rarely will get their meals paid for.

Nurse Practioners are more advanced then RNS.

Registered Nurses also called RNs do get their meals paid for. This is normally done by factoring in a meal stipend. This is in addition to their hourly rate of 100+ an hour. The typical nurse on assignment across the country  receive a tax free stipend to buy food.

That tax free stipend depends on where they are working. If they are working in a high cost of living area such as LA or NYC, then they might receive 80 or 90 dollars tax free per day for food.

 

 

How Much Are Nurses Paid?

As mentioned above, the amount of money a nurse is paid depends on location!

LPNs in the larger cities might command 80k a year. That’s not bad for a degree that does not require 4 years of schooling. The LPNs that are interviewed for the article did state that they end up doing a lot of hard work that their superiors pass over to them. So they earn it.

RNs make 100k+ in most major cities. Travel Nurses in NYC and Los Angeles have been known to make 150 an hour (putting their salaries at 200k a year). Most of this money flows from the federal government as hospitals have been mandated to have a set number of nurses on staff.

A friend of mine left a highly lucrative but stressful career in advertising sales to move into Nursing. She did a two year course at a local community college  and switched to nursing.

Her first year as a Nurse she make close to 200k and much of that was as a traveling nurse giving people flu shots. She said it was the easiest job in the world, even though it was repetitive. But she could work 13 weeks and then take a vacation for a month, and then go back to work. It was defiantly more of a secure job than her sales role which required her to constantly make sales close deals.

In some states like Texas, travel nuses can make a lot of money.

Do Nurses Get Free Food?

It is not free, but it is paid for. When a nurse signs a contract they are given things like stipends. These are set aside amounts of money that are given to the nurse so that she does not have to spend money on his or her own food.

Most nurses receive several hundred dollars a week as a meal allowance. In many cases, especially if they are acting as travelers, they do not have to pay taxes on this money.

There is an entire network of accountants and CPAs and nurse blogs that go into this fascinating world. I’m not that detailed in it as I am not a nurse, but enough friends are and they all tell me that if everyone knew how much money they made they would faint!

I did personal training and coaching once for a Hedge Fund. They had free cappuccino and catered lunches twice a week, but even the analysts and support staff people didn’t get hundreds of dollars a week that nurses do.

Why Don’t Nurses Pay Taxes?

Nurses pay taxes but the smart ones find ways to pay way less than their colleagues.

The nurses union and nursing lobby is incredibly powerful. However, one of the reasons that they don’t pay taxes has to do with travel.

When nurses travel to another state to work, they receive thousands of dollars in tax free payments. The employers put the nurse up in a hotel and then provide them with excess money in the form of stipends. These stipends are in the form of food allowances, and housing allowances.

Some nurses can make 40k a month if they work overtime and get paid time and a half.  My friend tells me about them posting on Instagram showing checks from their employer for weekly overtime in excess of 15k a week.

So, when a hospital is paying this much for a nurse, it makes sense that the nurse would not expect to pay for food. It’s sort of like a comp that they get because they are in a situation to demanded it.

 

What Are Food Stipends and Why Do Nurses Get Them?

As explained above nurses who work on special hospital assignments are given stipends in addition to their salary. Here is how it works.

Someone who graduates from a two year community nursing school in New York or New Jersey. Their starting salary would be around 80k plus full health insurance and pension. That is pretty good, but most nurses will also want to have a food stipend.

If they are on a travel contract or if they arrange for a per diem in addition to their full time union job, they can normally ask for and get a tax free food stipend. That might be anywhere from 50 to 100 a day. That is an extra few hundred dollars a week.

That food stipend can be used for food, or it can be used for anything else. Many hospital nurses also work per diem assignments at different hospitals and can negotiate food budgets for their new assignments.

The most popular food stipend is the one given to travel nurses. These nurses are given the most daily food stipend for free food, but most nurses will tell you that they do not spend their stipend on food and instead just eat the hospital food that they have access to. The food stipend for travel nurses while they are on assignment is looked at as more of a signing bonus.

Some hospitals have initiated eat healthy programs for nurses do to the importance of nurse health. As has been covered in many magazines, nurses tend to eat a lot of processed food such as soda, chips, and fast food. This might be due to their hectic schedules and going from one shift at the hospital to a per diem elsewhere. It leaves little time for healthy eating, which is not good.

It would be important for hospitals to encourage healthy eating by providing more healthy and free food such as organic salads and other free meals to their nurses on staff.