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

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

#81

Post by xboxnolifes »

wayoutthere wrote: post #45
_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…

There's a difference between "believing" in vaccines and not trusting an individual vaccine. It's not an all or nothing position.

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

#82

Post by randycupertino »

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…

> 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).

Not to mention the patients! I'm not a nurse but have worked with patients on a few hospital units and I have been groped by old male patients several times. Also patient's families can be incredibly rude, mean and demanding to nurses. They're trained for it and you do kind of get used to it, but it does wear you down after a while.

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

#83

Post by randycupertino »

908B64B197 wrote: post #79
TheCapn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian speaking, wife is ICU RN. Everything you've said is spot on, but there's always more to add. Nurses get assaulted pretty much daily. It's such a problem, management basically said it's not worth reporting because nothing is going to be done. The largest issue is the chronically understaffed units. The burnout that results from having double the normal patient load makes everyone cranky and the team atmospher…

> management basically said it's not worth reporting because nothing is going to be done. Just call the police directly. > She was out of school working casual shifts for 5 years before getting a temporary position, and longer after to get the permanent job Sounds like there's too much nurses on the market if that's what the job market looks like.

> > management basically said it's not worth reporting because nothing is going to be done.

> Just call the police directly.

If you call the police to tell them that a 78 year old man with dementia grabbed your boob while you were trying to fix his nasal canula they are gonna laugh at you and say there's nothing to be done.

For the patients who are chronic assaulters, MAYBE if you are lucky they will get transferred to another unit or another hospital. But it will take a LOT of really bad instances to make this happen... and all it does is turf out the issue somewhere else.

We once transferred and old man who masturbated and threw his semen on the nurse in the room. Buried in his paperwork about 180 pages back was a big note "DO NOT LET THIS PATIENT BE ATTENDED BY FEMALE STAFF." But nobody saw that until the incident already happened.

edit: Also, it's not that there are too many nurses on the market. It's the places only want to hire ones with floor experience. Nobody is willing to train new grads. A few places have new-grad specific programs, but they don't move fast enough or take enough new grads to help with the problem.

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

#84

Post by randycupertino »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #3
Miner49er wrote: post #2

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

You're assuming that hospitals wouldn't rather pay double to have nurses who see themselves as transient cogs in the machine and give few shits about anything beyond hitting the KPIs they need to keep getting paid.

> You're assuming that hospitals wouldn't rather pay double to have nurses who see themselves as transient cogs in the machine and give few shits about anything beyond hitting the KPIs they need to keep getting paid.

This is a really great point! I recently read a pretty good true crime book (cheesy, I know, lol!) about the serial killer nurse Charles Cullen who was a nurse in New Jersey and killed his patients via insulin injections. He killed 40 know and up to 400 patients which makes him one of the most prolific serial killers in history.

What I found interesting and ties right into your comment is that before they were onto him and when his patients kept dying, the hospital managers LOVED HIM because he was very efficient, hit all his KPIs and took on a lot of work. He would ask to help out the other nurses and kill their patients so then it wouldn't get on his record that he was killing his own patients.

It was a pretty interesting but harrowing read if anyone is looking for book recommendations. The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Good-Nurse-Audiobook/B00C9SW5...

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

#85

Post by vondur »

ceejayoz wrote: post #29
benjaminwootton wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing how even raising this as a question gets you downvoted. Yes, I’m sure it’s a factor, and needlessly so considering the vaccine seems to have a negligible effect on transmission. Prepared for my own downvotes after sharing some particularly uncomfortable truths.

> Amazing how even raising this as a question gets you downvoted. That's because it's readily debunked. Nurses largely can't evade the vaccine mandates by moving; virtually all healthcare facilities are subject to the Federal vaccine mandate. > Yes, I’m sure it’s a factor, and needlessly so considering the vaccine seems to have a negligible effect on transmission. That doesn't seem to be true. https://www.nbcnews.com…

There are plenty of articles from healthcare CEOs complaining about forcing the vaccine mandate. The loss of just a few percent of nursing staff can cause crippling staffing issues.

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

#86

Post by [deleted] »

SquibblesRedux wrote: post #80
senortumnus wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surgeon here, always try to treat nurses with respect and work with them as a team member to accomplish the best care for the patient. Maybe it’s a midwest thing.

Independent of the medical profession, there is definitely a midwest thing. I have traveled a fair amount, and the culture in the US midwest is infinitely more polite, respectful, and helpful that that of the east or west coasts.

[deleted]

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

#87

Post by gremIin »

randycupertino wrote: post #84
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that hospitals wouldn't rather pay double to have nurses who see themselves as transient cogs in the machine and give few shits about anything beyond hitting the KPIs they need to keep getting paid.

> You're assuming that hospitals wouldn't rather pay double to have nurses who see themselves as transient cogs in the machine and give few shits about anything beyond hitting the KPIs they need to keep getting paid. This is a really great point! I recently read a pretty good true crime book (cheesy, I know, lol!) about the serial killer nurse Charles Cullen who was a nurse in New Jersey and killed his patients via i…

I'm starting to think health care should not be run like a business.

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

#88

Post by captnObvious »

lostmsu wrote: post #62
captnObvious wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worked in hospitals for years. The day my flu vaccine expired I had to go get another or I would be in violation of my contract. Has been like that for decades.

Have you ever seen people quitting over that?

Not before it got politicized.

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

#89

Post by ceejayoz »

vondur wrote: post #85
ceejayoz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazing how even raising this as a question gets you downvoted. That's because it's readily debunked. Nurses largely can't evade the vaccine mandates by moving; virtually all healthcare facilities are subject to the Federal vaccine mandate. > Yes, I’m sure it’s a factor, and needlessly so considering the vaccine seems to have a negligible effect on transmission. That doesn't seem to be true. https://www.nbcnews.com…

There are plenty of articles from healthcare CEOs complaining about forcing the vaccine mandate. The loss of just a few percent of nursing staff can cause crippling staffing issues.

Sure, why blame yourself when you can blame someone else? It’s a gift for cost-cutting hospital admins who’ve been running understaffed facilities for years.

The ERs in my city have been code red half the time for the last decade.

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

#90

Post by throwaway0a5e »

the_d3f4ult wrote: post #77
wayoutthere wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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.

Bullshit. Very few doctors behave this way and it's generally any better tolerated in a healthcare workplace than in any other workplace. This is a media construct designed as a scapegoat for the many failures of the american healthcare system. The greatest trick corporate healthcare systems ever played was convincing everyone that physicians are the villains and not the mega-corp that's bleeding every penny out of h…

He said surgeons, not doctors.
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