Stop Working a 60-Hour Job on a 40-Hour Salary
The Cost of Your Altruism
You didn't invest in years of school just to give away 20 hours of free labor every week.
As a hard-working NP, you’re committed to patient care. Unfortunately, that commitment is often weaponized, forcing you into a cycle of unpaid after-hours work that drastically dilutes your effective hourly wage. The idea that you have to work a 60-hour job on a 40-hour salary is not an expectation of a sustainable career; it’s a form of financial self-sabotage.
It’s time to stop the bleed and reclaim the true value of your salary.
🛑 Contrarian Take: Your Altruism Is Being Weaponized by Your Employer (and Your Patients).
The culture of "patient-centered care" pressures you into self-sacrifice. This is often reinforced by colleagues who applaud working "above and beyond" without questioning why that extra work is necessary. This mentality ensures that administrative tasks, charting, and inbox management bleed into your personal time.
The Real Cost of Unpaid Work: Diluted Wages
When you work 50 or 60 hours but are paid for 40, your effective hourly wage drops dramatically, often to the point where you're making less per hour than an experienced staff nurse. This is not just a loss of time; it’s a direct financial hit.
The Role of Job Creep and Quiet Hiring
This overwork isn't accidental. It's often fueled by systemic labor exploitation tactics:
Job Creep: The slow and continuous expansion of your workload as non-provider tasks are added to your plate over time.
Quiet Hiring: Your organization increases your responsibilities (e.g., new initiatives, more patients) instead of hiring new staff, without increasing your pay.
Dry Promotion: You get a new title or increased responsibility but no increase in compensation.
These tactics take advantage of your desire to do right by your patients, resulting in the unpaid second shift.
The True Consequence: The Unbilled Backlog
I worked in a clinic where the push to see more patients resulted in a massive failure to close the notes for billing. Providers were so far behind there were thousands of unsigned visit notes, some over six months old, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars of uncollected revenue.
One particular co-worker comes to mind in how altruism often works against the provider. When asked about weekend plans, she said she planned to sacrifice her entire weekend to charting, and the boss simply encouraged it, validating her self-sacrifice instead of addressing the broken system. This is the culture that expects you to don’t work a 60-hour job on a 40-hour salary.
Your Defense: Boundaries and Efficiency
You have the power to fortify your 40-hour workweek against these encroachments.
Document Everything: Meticulously chart your time and activities. If asked to take on a new task, ask how it will be compensated or what task you should stop doing to make room.
Enforce Boundaries: Use strategies for managing phone calls and the patient portal to stop the work from bleeding into your personal time.
Prioritize: Strategically use your administrative time for high-value work (like closing charts and reviewing critical results) and defer non-urgent tasks.
💡 Solution: Reclaim Your Value with Chart Smart Mastery
You can escape the cycle of diluted wages and burnout. Chart Smart Mastery is the tactical blueprint that teaches you the skills you need to enforce your value.
Mindset: Stop accepting the unpaid second shift as normal (Module 1).
Workflow: Master Real-Time Documentation and Active Pre-Charting so there are no unsigned notes or backlogs to sacrifice your weekends for (Modules 3 & 5).
Defense: Learn to identify job creep and use strategic delegation to defend your 40-hour boundary (Modules 7 & 8).
➡️ Stop letting your job steal your life. Enroll in Chart Smart Mastery and get paid for the work you do.
(Want to learn the specific techniques? Read our related article: NP Resident Cuts Visit Time by 50% with One Charting Hack.)
