For years they enabled the AMA to cap residency spots and created an artificial scarcity & drive prices up.
Now they are whining that they are a scarce resource?
Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty
91–100 of 180 posts
Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty
#92If their industry didn't artificially restrict the supply of labor to keep their wages sky high, they wouldn't be so overworked now that more is required of them. My sympathy is nonexistent; they've made out like bandits for years and now they're paying the price for that (unfortunately, that's a price that must be paid by the rest of us too.) I hope they begin to take this as a wakeup call. To the downvoters, let me…
you're blaming ground-level individual doctors and nurses for administrative and systematic industry failures. In a heavily regulated and specialized industry where mobility is more limited.
No, this guy is actually correct.
The supply of medical doctors is kept artificially low in order to keep salaries artificially high. I ran into this firsthand. I was actually a pre-med student in college, but as I really dug into how the whole system works and found out that physicians' groups and lobbies work to prevent new medical schools from being established, to keep spots in existing medical schools scarce, to keep their salaries inflated, I got disgusted and instead finished my degree in biological sciences with a focus in evolutionary biology.
The system needs an enormous overhaul and reform. There are some workarounds being implemented to address demand, notably nurse practitioners, who have almost the same powers and privileges as M.D.s, but not quite. That's even changing though.
But the core of OP's post is totally correct. A huge part of this situation we find ourselves in right now is due to good old-fashioned greed and protectionism.
Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't care how much someone other than me makes. I care that you're so insensitive that when you're told that medical professionals are burning out en mass you think money makes up for it. That's so incredibly lacking in both empathy (they're human beings) and utility (they're medical care providers) that I can't reconcile it with any good-faith viewpoint on the world. So I have to assume it's trolling and should n…
Some jobs are hard and extremely strenuous. The least we can do is pay very well for them and make sure that anyone doing the job is well informed of the risks, is a consenting adult, is making the choice freely and not under coercion like threat of being fired. Very good pay is absolutely an “upside”. The personal and emotional attacks against OP are totally unwarranted.
What you are interpreting as personal/emotional attacks, are people shocked and responding to OP's lack of empathy and disregard for human beings and our hospitals being staffed with overworked emotionally drained people, which affects us all but the OP is shifting the focus to, well at least some workers are making 10,000 more.
I mean, I guess some people just need that spelled out to them due to their lack of ability to empathize.
Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty
#94On the upside, traveling nurses are now routinely making 5-10K a week (and they usually get real PPE rather than be told to reuse stuff) That's far better money than most soldiers (or even FAANG engineers) make, and the risk of being shot or having to write crappy unit tests is far smaller. Source if you don't believe me: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/24/health/covid-nurses-big-money... Lmao what's wrong downvoters? Do…
I don't care how much someone other than me makes. I care that you're so insensitive that when you're told that medical professionals are burning out en mass you think money makes up for it. That's so incredibly lacking in both empathy (they're human beings) and utility (they're medical care providers) that I can't reconcile it with any good-faith viewpoint on the world. So I have to assume it's trolling and should n…
Well you did amplify it by commenting on it...
I don't really get why the other comment was so bad though. And it sounds like you're saying a better thing to do is just quietly feel empathy and express some vague generic words of acknowledgement. Which will inevitably be followed by promptly forgetting about it and going back to our normal lives, like 99% of us reading this thread will do. What good does that really do?
And what harm does it really do to discuss/debate different aspects of this situation, and learn more details about what's going on?
Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty
#95Anecdote time. My GF is an OT, burnt out as hell, and pushing through it. Walking away means just not being paid for a while, because the options are either 1) go to a different facility, which wouldn't make anything better because the whole industry is struggling with covid, or 2) go to a job outside the industry, which means reskilling or making unskilled wages with a bachelor's+master's sized mountain of student l…
Burned out nurses and nurse feeling guilty and covering up for admin cost cutting doesn't help anyone.
From a nurse prespective it's a difficult choice and without a safety net people are forced into these choices. There is no easy answer now. I would not know what to tell them.
Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
The labor force isn't a frictionless system. If we decided to double nurse's pay worldwide right now, how long do you think it would take until we have more nurses?
I’m sure it takes years for a nurse to learn the ins and outs of the job, but my point is if they were paid well historically, then more people would have become nurses. And perhaps less trained people like CNA’s can be trained in a few months to start assisting nurses? But it has to begin with incentivizing them with proper pay. Relying on people’s charity to do their duty in lieu of competitive pay is not a good st…
Also nurses would come out of retirement or stay working longer. And people would be less likely to quit a nursing degree.
Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty
#97I've got a friend who's a nurse in a local hospital. She's in the OB ward but has a half dozen patients on her floor with Covid. She says at least half is on antianxiety meds (xanax); she just got a talking-to from her doc who refused to refill her prescription. Apparently, the first bottle is available for anyone with the connections, but after that they start talking about addiction and asking questions. They are o…
Cynical take: 30% bonus is there for retention. If you don't stick around for the year to hit the bonus, that's salary they don't need to pay you.
That’s not cynical, that’s the purpose of a bonus. To ensure retention until the bonus is paid, and if you don’t stick around until the payout date, then you don’t get a bonus.
You also stagger the bonus accrual and the payout time so that when the bonus is paid, they are halfway to accruing next year’s bonus so if they want to leave, they have to contemplate giving up a half year’s worth of bonus.
Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty
#98It's just a job. Nobody is being forced to go to work. If you don't like your job, or if you can't do your job, you can quit and get another job. This is America.
As long as people are griping and complaining instead of quitting we know we're in good shape.
Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty
#99It's just a job. Nobody is being forced to go to work. If you don't like your job, or if you can't do your job, you can quit and get another job. This is America. As long as people are griping and complaining instead of quitting we know we're in good shape.
> Nobody is being forced to go to work.
Your patients will die if you don't go to work.
You're not "forced" to go in. But there's a strong sense of duty here. Its life-or-death. Nurses / doctors chose this profession because they want to save lives.
Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty
#100It's just a job. Nobody is being forced to go to work. If you don't like your job, or if you can't do your job, you can quit and get another job. This is America. As long as people are griping and complaining instead of quitting we know we're in good shape.
> Nobody is being forced to go to work. Your patients will die if you don't go to work. You're not "forced" to go in. But there's a strong sense of duty here. Its life-or-death. Nurses / doctors chose this profession because they want to save lives.
Sure, there are pros and cons to going to work. That's why it's called work. Every job has them.