A Day in the Life of a Medsurg RN in Las Vegas

Clocking in. Grinding 12 hours. Hitting the Vegas nightlife or a nice restaurant in the evening. A typical day in the life of a Vegas nurse definitely has its perks. Here, you will find some of your responsibilities as a registered nurse (RN), what to expect for salary, which RN programs Las Vegas has for you, and what to do in your free time.

What Is Daily Life Like as an RN in Las Vegas?

Every day is a new adventure when you work as a registered nurse.

It’s true. Codes. Admissions. Surgeries. Tests. No one day, working as a nurse in any given specialty, will look the same as another. The following story is just one example of what a typical day might look like for a Las Vegas RN working a per diem shift on a Medsurg unit:

‍At 5:00 a.m., your alarm will go off, and your day will start with a little stretch, filling your lungs with fresh air and new energy. Something you probably don’t want to miss is a delicious cup of hot coffee to nurture your soul and help you give your patients warm treatment throughout the day. ‍
At 5:30 a.m. or so, you will probably be in your car driving to the hospital where you work—by the way, 61% of nurses in Nevada work in hospitals. Other common work settings for nurses in Nevada are ambulatory care, home health, medical clinics, physician offices, dialysis centers, academic settings, school health, skilled nursing, and long-term care facilities.
‍At 6:30 a.m., you will arrive and clock in, change into your scrubs, and wait for the night shift nursing handoff report.
‍At 7:00 a.m., after a quick debriefing with the night shift team, you will organize your day and look through your patients’ labs, medical histories, and the doctor’s orders. If one of your patients needs surgery, you must do your pre-op checklist and have the consent on the chart.
‍At 8:00 a.m., it is time to visit patients. Las Vegas has a location quotient of 0.84, meaning there are fewer registered nurses in the area than the national average. In other words, more nurses are needed, and you may have to care for many patients. The number of patients you have will also depend on the type of facility or hospital unit you work in. For example, you’ll have many more patients in a medical-surgical unit than in an intensive care unit (ICU). That said, regardless of where you work, you may have some very busy days.
‍At 8:30 a.m., you will set your patients up for their first meal of the day, chart your morning assessments, take patients’ vitals, and update their care plans.
‍At 9:00 a.m., some patients will probably ask for painkillers or different medicines, so you will have to call the doctors to consult about the medications; you will also be getting new orders from various doctors since they will be seeing their patients as well.
‍At 10:00 a.m., your busiest time of the morning will be passing. At this time, you may wonder if your payment is good enough for what you are doing, but then you remember that registered nurses in Las Vegas have an annual mean wage of $97,680 and a mean hourly pay of $46,96. As if that were not enough, Las Vegas is the fifth highest-paying city for nurses in the United States after factoring in the cost of living; the average RN salary in Las Vegas is 16.46% higher than the national average.
‍At 11:30 a.m., with the information above, you will feel happy, with boosted energy, and ready to continue your 12-hour shift. You will also start setting your patients up for lunch and assessing patients for discharge.
‍At 12:00 p.m., you will continue charting any changes in the patients’ treatment plans or symptoms. Also, you must look for a space to eat and care for yourself. In the meantime, your interest in learning new things may come up, and you may wonder, what RN programs are good in Las Vegas?‍
At 12:30 p.m., after having a short chat with your charge nurse about RN programs, you will find out that the University of Nevada has great graduate programs to help you achieve your goals. Your charge nurse may also share other useful information on RN programs.
‍At 1:00 p.m., a little bit more relaxed after a short break, you will probably continue charting.
‍At 2:00 p.m., the second part of your day begins, and everything starts getting busy; discharges and admissions are coming up.
‍At 3:00 p.m., you will be doing more charting and trying to catch up with the tasks you didn’t have time to accomplish before, like starting new IVs and changing dressings.
‍At 4:00 p.m., you need to see who needs more medication and provide wound care.
‍At 4:30 p.m., new orders from different doctors could come up because some patients may be in pain or because there may have been a change in their condition.
‍From 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., your last round of medications happens; you will prepare patients for dinner and get everything else done because your shift is ending.
‍From 6:45 to 7:00 p.m., you will complete your end-of-shift report, hand off your shift, and go home.
‍At 8:00 p.m., you will arrive at your house, and the time becomes slightly more relative. You have many questions as you settle in the city; perhaps you want to know more about RN jobs in Las Vegas, and you ask yourself…

How Can I Find Full-Time RN Jobs in Las Vegas?

As you are making your meal, your roommate arrives, and—lucky for you—she has been in the city longer and knows more about nursing needs in the state, so she explains that 4,000 RNs are required in the state to meet the national RN-to-population average ratio.

Two out of every three Nevadans live in a part of the state with a shortage of primary healthcare providers, so there is a great availability of registered nursing jobs in Nevada.

Nevada is also the second state in the country that pays best in comparison to the cost of living and is among the ten best states for registered nurses to work. Plus, the work growth projection in Nevada is 22.3%.

Now that you know more about the area and the state regarding nursing jobs and projections, you probably feel confident about your choice of picking up jobs in Las Vegas. At this point, it is possible that you may have one last concern about nursing jobs in the area, which could be…

How Can I Find Part-Time RN Jobs in Las Vegas?

You're probably looking to make more money or supplement your income and have more flexibility in your job, and you remembered that a nurse you met at a social event was working part-time, so you decided to call and ask her how to get that type of job.

So you start talking to her, and she immediately starts telling you about this open nurse marketplace where you can find per diem RN jobs on a part- or full-time basis because you have your choice of where and when you want to work—and best of all, you can nearly double the national average payment—pretty amazing.

Your friend continued talking about this open nursing market, and you asked her, “Where can I find such a thing?” She answered, “It’s just a click away,” and showed you the Nursa app.

The nurse marketplace platform is called Nursa. In this app, you can find the jobs you are looking for.

Now that our story about a typical day for an RN in Vegas has come to its end, it is important to say that the day described above is very simple compared to what nurses have to face every day. Nurses have great responsibilities on their shoulders, and they can have very stressful days.

What can you do for fun in this thrilling city?

Besides all the entertainment that Las Vegas has to offer, there are also some fantastic destinations if you like to go into nature, such as the following:

If you like kayaking, the Emerald Cave is a spectacular cave with green waters. This cave is in the Black Canyon, and there are many tours to visit the cave.
If you are adventurous, exploring the Mojave Desert with an ATV can be super a thrill.
If you like hiking, the Antelope Canyon and the Horseshoe Bend are great options.

If you want more detailed information on Nevada, click the link below.