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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

#21

Post by ceejayoz »

politician wrote: post #18
KittenInABox wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of people who leave because of vaccine mandates are a few percentage points. It's been borne out again and again as mandates are put in effect that the vast majority end up complying and only a few percentage points end up leaving from them. This is a much bigger phenomenon related to how hospital administration cuts nursing to the bone and the lack of organized labor pushing for safer standards of work an…

Wait, there isn't union for nurses?!

There are nursing unions. Not every facility is unionized.

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

#22

Post by h2odragon »

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.

Very well put

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

#23

Post by bluedino »

ceejayoz wrote: post #11
josh_today wrote: post #4

Could this also be a result of forced vaccinations on healthcare workers (who were on the front lines for us early in the pandemic) who then move to states without mandates.

The mandate is Federal - any facility that takes Medicaid or Medicare is subject to it. That's pretty much everything except a few small private practices. Traveling nurses will almost always be required to be vaccinated.

They were among the first to be required

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

#25

Post by captnObvious »

cabbageoverload wrote: post #7
josh_today wrote: post #4

Could this also be a result of forced vaccinations on healthcare workers (who were on the front lines for us early in the pandemic) who then move to states without mandates.

Do you have information that supports this theory or is it just a guess?

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.

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

#26

Post by coliveira »

cogman10 wrote: post #12
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.

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.

The capitalist oligarchy will prefer to destroy an industry rather than increase salaries. This is essentially what they did in the US (and around the world) when moving industry to low wage countries.

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

#27

Post by ootsootsoots »

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.

Yeah was reading about this the other day locally.

The inflated cost of traveling nurses is used in negotiating new contracts.

Frankly if American workers want better, they need to realize supply and demand applies to labor.

There’s no reason a surgeon should have a Ferrari while the nursing staff that supports them makes $70k year.

It’s highly skilled labor but also, imo, artificially constrained by our educational funding choices.

All of which is politically babysat to be just so according to well paid economists who are trotted out to tell us inequality is normal because that’s how it’s always been.

Americans made kings and robber barons again and just changed the words. Meanwhile petty crime is high treason.

Human society as we know it was set on this path by forever lifers. The end game is the end times. They don’t care if anyone survives, no one will be around to complain.

Drop the worker euphemisms and call everyone people. This arbitrary taxonomy to satisfy political sorting is inhuman.

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

#28

Post by blacktriangle »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #15
josh_today wrote: post #4

Could this also be a result of forced vaccinations on healthcare workers (who were on the front lines for us early in the pandemic) who then move to states without mandates.

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.

I love how you both acknowledge that health care workers quitting over forced vaccination is an issue while immediately dismissing their actual experience of having worked through both pre and post vaccine covid world and first hand seeing the impact of mass vacination.

If enough health care workers are willing to walk away from their jobs rather than take a vaccine, maybe you should take their observations seriously?

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

#29

Post by ceejayoz »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #15
josh_today wrote: post #4

Could this also be a result of forced vaccinations on healthcare workers (who were on the front lines for us early in the pandemic) who then move to states without mandates.

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/health/health-news/vaccinated-people...

"Both vaccines reduced transmission, although they were more effective against the alpha variant compared to the delta variant. When infected with the delta variant, a given contact was 65 percent less likely to test positive if the person from whom the exposure occurred was fully vaccinated with two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. With AstraZeneca, a given contact was 36 percent less likely to test positive if the person from whom the exposure occurred was fully vaccinated."

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

#30

Post by pc86 »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #15
josh_today wrote: post #4

Could this also be a result of forced vaccinations on healthcare workers (who were on the front lines for us early in the pandemic) who then move to states without mandates.

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.

The vaccine does reduce transmissibility. From the CDC: "Infections with the Delta variant in vaccinated persons potentially have reduced transmissibility than infections in unvaccinated persons, although additional studies are needed."[0] and Delta is more transmissible than "regular" COVID for the vaccinated (and I think in general).

But the primary benefit of the vaccine is to reduce the burden on the healthcare system. The vast majority (mid-to-high-90%s) of hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated. It stands to reason that the more people running around without being vaccinated, the more people will get hospitalized. At a certain point, death is just a percentage of hospitalization, especially as you have places without beds that have to just turn people away. So fewer vaccines directly correlates to more deaths.

Speaking personally now, I don't care if people don't want to get vaccinated. I think it's idiotic, the vaccine is FDA approved now, hundreds of millions of people have gotten it and side effects are as rare or rarer than any other vaccine. But if you work with the public, especially in public health, schools, etc., there is a list of required vaccinations multiple pages long. Adding one more to the list isn't an encroachment on anyone's civil liberties, and you're free to move elsewhere, but that's not what's happening here.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

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