Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Worn-out nurses hit the road for better pay, stressing hospital budgets, morale

text.npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 97 posts

Re: Worn-out nurses hit the road for better pay, stressing hospital budgets, morale

#41

Post by mfer »

mooreds wrote: post #10
Miner49er wrote: post #2

Isn't the solution simple? Pay nurses like 80%-100% of what traveling nurses make, instead of 50% or less.

I don't run a hospital, but know folks who have worked in one. My guess is that paying someone 2x (or many someones) for a short period of time is easier on the long term budget than raising the wages of permanent employees. Feels similar to how every company seems to want senior developer talent, but few will pay for training new senior talent.

Hitting on the budget is a good point.

Hospitals are often run inefficiently [1]. This leads to a lot of overhead costs. Many procedures in hospitals loose money for hospitals while others make money. Taking care of COVID patients typically looses a hospital money. So, where does the money come from to pay nurses more when much of their work is on patients they loose money on?

[1] https://claytonchristensen.com/books/the-innovators-prescrip...

Re: Worn-out nurses hit the road for better pay, stressing hospital budgets, morale

#42

Post by avs733 »

"free market exists for employees as well as businesses, businesses concerned"

I found myself recently listening to a podcast about the teacher shortage. Something like 20% of first year teachers leave the profession. It costs around $20k to replace a teacher. The average teacher starting salary is $41k. If you could get teachers to stay by (1) treating them with respect, (2) administrators having their back, and (3) raising that to $46k, more than 10% of pay, how many would stay for at least five years? The first two cost nothing, and if they stay more than 4 years you have entirely recouped the cost of replacing them every year.

Re: Worn-out nurses hit the road for better pay, stressing hospital budgets, morale

#43

Post by pc86 »

bluedino wrote: post #24
Miner49er wrote: post #2

Isn't the solution simple? Pay nurses like 80%-100% of what traveling nurses make, instead of 50% or less.

Healthcare isn't expensive enough?

Paying a nurse $125k instead of $80k is not going to appreciably increase the cost of healthcare for any individual patient when the radiologist makes $500k, the surgeon makes $750k, the charge nurse makes $200k, and you get billed $35 for a Tylenol.

Re: Worn-out nurses hit the road for better pay, stressing hospital budgets, morale

#44

Post by avs733 »

JanisL wrote: post #14

I find it a bit depressing that the "you need to change jobs to get raises" dynamic is being seen in hospitals now as well.

it's not a dynamic it is propaganda designed to delegitimize concerns about working conditions.

Labor is a form of capital when there is not enough labor to go around - or when labor can be more easily relocated.

Re: Worn-out nurses hit the road for better pay, stressing hospital budgets, morale

#45

Post by wayoutthere »

_pmf_ wrote: post #37

Maybe going from being labelled as a hero to "get vaccinated or you're a threat to public health" is not something that sits very well with people.

Vaccines as a job requirement are nothing new and I have no pity for people who have been fired as a result. Cry me a fucking river, you’ve had to have them for decades to send your kid to public school.

Honestly if they don’t believe in vaccines, I question their competency as a nurse and do not want them touching me. I as a patient should have the choice to manage my own risk level. These nurses can go find another job where they’re not exposing already sick patients to a deadly virus, because IMO they’re not qualified to be nurses.

Re: Worn-out nurses hit the road for better pay, stressing hospital budgets, morale

#46

Post by mfer »

wayoutthere wrote: post #39
mfer wrote: post #33

There are a few things I've learned from the nurses I know... - Nurses, the primary caregivers in Hospitals, have been treated pretty poorly for a long time. Some of it is pay, some of it is expectations, some of it is just the way the people around them treat them (e.g., the way surgeons often talk to them). - Some management has gotten down right mean. I know one hospital that has dictated that refusing to work a m…

> (e.g., the way surgeons often talk to them) To be fair, surgeons talk to everyone that way. I haven’t met a surgeon who didn’t talk down to other people. My theory is that you have to have a huge fucking ego to cut someone open and believe you’re going to make them better.

Nurses working 12 hour shifts spend more time around surgeons than most other people do. It takes it's toll.

You can be very good at what you do and confident in it without talking down to others, being arrogant, or treating others poorly. It's a cultural and character thing.

Re: Worn-out nurses hit the road for better pay, stressing hospital budgets, morale

#47

Post by SamBam »

adolph wrote: post #19
cogman10 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that's really where this article should be focusing. Hospitals are basically at the "We tried nothing and we are out of ideas!" The solution to a lot of nurse burnout is really pretty simple, increase their wages, hire more than the minimum of travel nurses so they aren't all working overtime.

Wages are orthogonal to burnout Burnout is a psychological factor

I think you are mostly right about this, but decent pay goes a long way to signaling respect, which is definitely a factor in burnout.

Re: Worn-out nurses hit the road for better pay, stressing hospital budgets, morale

#48

Post by ThaJay »

bluedino wrote: post #24
Miner49er wrote: post #2

Isn't the solution simple? Pay nurses like 80%-100% of what traveling nurses make, instead of 50% or less.

Healthcare isn't expensive enough?

It's not expensive because of nurse wages. It's expensive because of top manager wages, dividents and bonusses.

Re: Worn-out nurses hit the road for better pay, stressing hospital budgets, morale

#49

Post by lmilcin »

mfer wrote: post #33

There are a few things I've learned from the nurses I know... - Nurses, the primary caregivers in Hospitals, have been treated pretty poorly for a long time. Some of it is pay, some of it is expectations, some of it is just the way the people around them treat them (e.g., the way surgeons often talk to them). - Some management has gotten down right mean. I know one hospital that has dictated that refusing to work a m…

I don't have any experience with US healthcare but I know this depends a lot on the country.

Large part of this is that much of US healthcare is in the business of earning money or optimizing costs, the care being only side effect. As long as incentives are not right, there exists no practical way to fix the system, only prop it up here and there to eliminate worst offenses.

As to salaries, I just can't imagine how it is even legal for nurses to do same job but being paid more because they just joined. I can sort of understand that you can be paid more if you do same job but have more experience. You get paid for loyalty and for the added value of your knowledge/experience that makes your work potentially higher quality. But being paid less is shady af because it exploits the nurses which have high incentive to stay at one place if only to keep the commute to the hospital. If you have family you can't just move to somewhere else every 2-3 years just to keep your salary competitive.

As to verbal treatment, I understand that the problem is that if you are a good surgeon, you will be hired no matter how mean you are toward your coworkers.

In large companies I have worked for (mainly financial) this is not tolerated (as much). You can be great senior developer or tech lead, but if you are mean to junior developers you are likely going to be reprimanded and then dismissed if you continue.

Re: Worn-out nurses hit the road for better pay, stressing hospital budgets, morale

#50

Post by MattGaiser »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #9
MattGaiser wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't all workers very quickly becoming transient cogs in the machine? I don't know a single friend at this point on a fully staffed team in any field anywhere. Whether it be FAANG, startups, or the government, data analytics in retail or lawyers at law firms, there is massive churn everywhere.

It's not a binary. Fully staffed or not people who see themselves as long term employees with skin in the game or as providing a service to their community will be resistant to implementing policies that screw the customer and will help customers ask for the things they need to ask for to not get screwed. Employees who see themselves as transient more readily implement whatever management asks without thinking.

That is interesting take.

I would have thought that transients would be less likely to do that as they could more easily take other roles, while embedded people would have more to lose by opposing management. Why companies hire consultants for unpopular changes, as they will be leaving anyway and thus have less to lose.

I am not sure which one is the case.

Post reply on HN