America’s nurse staffing crisis has reached the breaking point
America’s nurse staffing crisis has reached the breaking point
The nurse staffing crisis is an urgent pain point for the country’s more than 5 million nurses, for patients, and for the entire health care system. In the last year, nurses have taken action to de…
Just a reminder that this isn't caused by lack of nurses. This is caused by a lack of salary, and a lack of support staff being hired.
160Don’t forget being treated like absolute shit by people who think browsing YouTube on the toilet is “doing research”.
79Just like teachers.
52I’m so tired. Just trying to get to Thanksgiving break at this point.
10
12 hour shifts certainly isn’t helping any either.
32IDK my gf works in ICU and loves it, she works 6 days straight and gets 8 off.
212 hour shifts aren't all that terrible, as long as you actually get off on time and are paid well for working the appropriate amount of time (whether that's 3/4/4/3 or 5/2/2/5, or 2/2/3/2/2/3, or any other schedule that gets you close to the standard hours per week). I've done 12s for about a decade, and haven't had any problems with it aside from occasionally running into schedule issues because it's hard to predict what day you'll be working/off without calculating which week of the pay period it is.
It all returns to how much work you have to do in those 12 hours. Having even a few minutes of downtime repeatedly throughout a shift has been going the way of the dodo, and that's going back to the original point of poor pay and fewer people to do everything needed.
2
100% correct. I am a nurse who hasn't worked for 3 years because of childcare costs
27Don’t think it’s the money honestly. Wife was an RN for 2 hospitals over 10 years and the reason she left to go private practice is because of the lack of support. Hospitals only care about the $ and, so called, patient rights, which comes at the expense of their staff’s word. She was rarely backed even though the patients or their families were lying 90% of the time.
She could make 2x as much at the hospital but chooses not to go back because of how miserable she was there. Screw them.
13Well, that's the point really. If the job is that bad, you need to offer hazard pay or people find alternatives.
7
a friend used to be a nurse. still works in health care, but in admin instead. stable (and flexible) hours, better pay, and has been able to work from home since before wfh became a hotbed topic (several years before covid, due to space issues at the facility at the time).
11
Funny how it's the most compassionate of us that are fucked the hardest by capitalism
65It's interesting because in terms of the amount of school/time you need to invest, nursing is a pretty good job. You can become an LPN in less time than it takes to get an Associate's and then make $50k starting out. RNs can get 70-80k starting out, although some states have raised educational requirements so that you need a Bachelor's.
13You can make that much but in places they don’t. I worked as a radiology aide and an OR aide at a local hospital when I was in college, thought about pursuing nursing as both of my parents are nurses. Two years there and one year of pre nursing in college and I thought “why am I going into this career? I get treated like crap by those above me and the patients, I get no support from my supervisors, I come home every day tired and complaining about work, and the stuff I bitch about is stuff my dad says has been happening since the hospital opened in the 70s” I got a degree in history and now I work as a PM for a contracting company that specializes in historic preservation, making more than I ever would as a nurse and I go to work and go home everyday in a pretty good mood.
If everyone working in the hospital wasn’t being treated like shit then I probably would be a nurse today but my time at the hospital was a huge eye opener.
18
I'm reminded of Graeber's take, that jobs that contribute nothing to society are paid extra, to compensate people for the knowledge that they contribute nothing, whereas jobs with a clear point are expected to take a pay cut in return for having a job with meaning.
10
This is what happens when the disparity in wealth continues to grow.
35Well, people keep voting for political candidates who want to change nothing...so...
6