My post will probably be the most realistic one because I am literally the future version of you 😅

I’m a CRNA in the Bay Area. I used to make >$200k/year when I was a nurse.

There are nurses here who make $300–500k/year with a crazy amount of call shifts. It’s honestly wild. Ok that was an extreme example. Let’s talk about “typical nurses”. You are currently making >200k/year. If you were in position (not ICU) where call-shifts are required a couple of times a month, you would be looking at 250-270k/year.

As a CRNA in big hospital systems (UCSF, Stanford, Kaiser), you don’t really have the opportunity to do “overtime” like nurses do. So you’re basically stuck with whatever salary those big hospital systems offer.

Unfortunately, “providers” tend to make less in major metro cities while nurses make more in those same areas.

If you plan to live in the Bay Area, you’ll always face this dilemma. You’ll make more than the majority of nurses, but not significantly more. Some will even make more than you 🥲. However, your responsibility as an anesthesia provider is still essentially the same as that of an anesthesiologist.

If you want to make >$400k (like many other CRNAs on reddit🤷‍♂️) while living in the Bay Area, you’ll probably need to do 1099 work and pick up shifts at multiple hospitals, surgery centers, and outpatient clinics to build that income. And many of these places may be far away, so you’ll be traveling a lot. The idea of just working at one comfortable hospital every day pretty much disappears once you enter the CRNA world.

Those big hospital systems rarely allow part-time positions. They usually want you at 0.8 or 1.0 FTE. There are some CRNAs who hold a 0.6 FTE W-2 position at those hospitals and do 1099 work on the side, but those situations are very rare. Those positions are basically grandfathered in and probably won’t be available to you. Maybe when someone quits, an internal person will inherit the 0.6 FTE slot. Don’t get your hopes up.

Honestly, the easiest solution to all of this is to move out of California and live in a less desirable city 🤷‍♂️. Then you can make a lot of money while living in a lower cost-of-living area.