Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty • Hacker News Board

Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty

#111

Post by renewiltord » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

jeffrallen wrote: post #57

renewiltord wrote: post #51

I'll do it. Lots of the things they can do can be outsourced to a cheaper less-trained individual. I know because the sleep deprivation means half of them are working at the capacity of a drunk version of me. The number of mistakes surgical assistants make that surgeons have to watch out for is quite something. Veteran surgeons like my parents have top notch surgical teams they've cultivated over time. But most surge…

Thanks. But you are not scalable. You know what is? An entire society taking this thing seriously.

There are many like me. I'd wager in the tens of thousands willing and able. If we'd started in March, you'd have had us trained by now.

If you start reservist wildfire training me now, I'll be ready by next season.

Certification fetishism is ruining America's agility. Unsurprising. All societies switch from exploration to exploitation to preservation at some point until they are replaced by a new disruptor. It happened to Britain. It's happening to America.

Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty

#112

Post by Scoundreller » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #97

jamie_ca wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And to add, sometimes a new employer will pay out that “lost” bonus if they really want you.

In my case, I was 3/4 into a 1yr retention bonus, and the new employer (which usually doesn’t do retention bonuses) agreed to give me the same bonus after staying for a year.

Not exactly the same thing, but trying to encourage people to consider jobs even if they’re part-way into one of these retention arrangements.

It was a ~$10k return for a few hours of negotiation. But I was prepared to walk away if I didn’t get it.

Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty

#113

Post by zaroth » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

supercanuck wrote: post #93

zaroth wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abili…

That’s not what OP said.

“I care that you're so insensitive that...” is not taking the most generous interpretation of OP’s comment and is absolutely a personal attack. It is not conducive to productive discussion.

Nurses are being paid more. We can feel free to make an argument for why that doesn’t matter without personal insults.

Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty

#114

Post by gwright » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #36

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most roles aren't the kind making that money. A few making big money does not make up for what's happening to the rest. And travel roles are weird/tough in other ways too.

I've got a nurse friend with significant autoimmune issues who can't quit her job because she needs the health insurance - she works in the ER of a rural hospital in the Midwest making ~$45k/year. She's absolutely inundated with Covid patients right now and is risking her life every minute that she spends there. Some random traveling medical professionals making good money in no way absolves the rest of the country's…

Nothing to do with nursing per-se, but de-coupling employment from health insurance would be a good thing. I realize that there are lots of other complicated issues with regard to health care and health insurance but I can't think of any other service that is so tightly coupled to your employer.

Some reading: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235989/

Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty

#115

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #61

lotsofpulp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly support nurses and nursing assistances walking away. Because society has shown that we don’t value their work enough to pay them enough to attract people to the job. Nursing homes are run on shoe string budgets, those people changing bed pans are well in their moral rights to strike and demand better pay. I don’t see anyone lining up to do their job. It’s also a bit rich for people who don’t work the…

I don't judge people walking out. I'm pushing back on people who judge people for not walking out, like 'they had it coming, why didn't they just walk out?' My GF is in this position right now, where walking out would mean switching industries in a pandemic, because other facilities aren't any better off. She's burnt out as hell, and puts up with an enormous amount of shit to make patients lives better, so I'm sensit…

Unfortunately, this is a "you get what you negotiate" world. So unless the nurses strike when they have the leverage, I don't see the situation improving for them.

For example:

https://herald-review.com/news/state-and-regional/workers-go...

>The members of SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana said they were seeking pay of $15.50 an hour for CNAs, and about $15 an hour for housekeepers and other workers, and hazard pay as essential workers during the pandemic.

Who can raise a family on less than $15 per hour? And we want to pay people that for dealing with people's bodily excretions? Not to mention the less than cooperative mental state sick and old people may be in due to their pain?

Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty

#116

Post by michaniskin » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

pizza wrote: post #107

michaniskin wrote: post #98

It'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.

Trying to come up with a charitable interpretation of this comment that doesn't just imply tossing nurses from one abusive and under-appreciative hospital system gig to the next. If that was the case the people who we would have the privilege of calling our healthcare services would all just leave. Market collapse, if you will. Not exactly long-term thinking in the middle of a worsening pandemic.

We don't have the power to toss anyone anywhere. They have the freedom to work or not work, or to change jobs, or any number of alternatives to working somewhere where they don't want to work.

If a lot of workers quit then the wages (and prices) rise, and workers move from other jobs to do the higher paid ones. There is only a shortage of labor when there are wage or price controls imposed on the businesses by legislation.

Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty

#117

Post by engineer_22 » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

I'm sure some of these folks could really use a break. But we need them! So please remember next time you're in a healthcare setting to treat your providers and nurses with dignity and respect!

Then we need to start talking, as a nation, what our goals are for our healthcare industry and what we're willing to set aside to achieve those goals. Clearly we were not prepared for this pandemic, maybe we need to make some structural changes.

Tertiary question, would Obamacare have alleviated this situation?

Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty

#118

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

n0us wrote: post #42

Man, this thread really bringing out the worst of Hackernews and its so disappointing but unfortunately not surprising to see the complete lack of capacity for empathy from some of the other heavily downvoted commenters. Almost everyone who participates on this site is well educated and fortunate enough to understand that people have been putting their lives on the line for months on end to help people through this c…

[deleted]

Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty

#119

Post by dragontamer » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

michaniskin wrote: post #116

pizza wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to come up with a charitable interpretation of this comment that doesn't just imply tossing nurses from one abusive and under-appreciative hospital system gig to the next. If that was the case the people who we would have the privilege of calling our healthcare services would all just leave. Market collapse, if you will. Not exactly long-term thinking in the middle of a worsening pandemic.

We don't have the power to toss anyone anywhere. They have the freedom to work or not work, or to change jobs, or any number of alternatives to working somewhere where they don't want to work. If a lot of workers quit then the wages (and prices) rise, and workers move from other jobs to do the higher paid ones. There is only a shortage of labor when there are wage or price controls imposed on the businesses by legisl…

There's a shortage of labor because COVID19 grows exponentially, and there's no possible way we can grow our nursing / doctors labor pool exponentially in a few short months.

Re: Doctors and Nurses Are Running on Empty

#120

Post by michaniskin » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #108

michaniskin wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay them more money. Simple.

How much money do I have to pay you to get a nursing degree, quit your current job, and start helping out the pandemic? Serious question. Now that you have an idea of how much money that actually costs, do you understand why things don't scale the way you think they do? Even then, it will take you years to get the skills needed to be a nurse (and in ~1 year, thanks to the vaccine, the surge in nurses won't be needed…

Nursing is not that complex. The bulk of the work can be offloaded on semi-skilled labor with on the job training. This is what the army does, it works fine. This is not rocket science here.