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The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

theguardian.com

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Re: The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

#41
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Yes can confirm this is real. I know both German and Dutch nurses who say that the workload is incredibly high. One older nurse also said the pressure today is much higher than years ago.

I am not surprised. Healthcare costs have been rising faster than inflation for several years. It's a difficult sell to increase budgets, so we have to resort to these "invisible" cost cutting measures to try and stay afloat.

In CA, USA. We got a 20% hike in healthcare prices for the renewal we just got this month. 20% is insane.

Re: The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

#42
post #3
post #2

Yes can confirm this is real. I know both German and Dutch nurses who say that the workload is incredibly high. One older nurse also said the pressure today is much higher than years ago.

I am not surprised. Healthcare costs have been rising faster than inflation for several years. It's a difficult sell to increase budgets, so we have to resort to these "invisible" cost cutting measures to try and stay afloat.

It's not just costs.

It is patient (and relatives) expectations.

It is knowing that any perceived issue could result in litigation.

It is that management may well have never 'worked the floor' so have no insight in to what happens.

There may well just not be the time to do all the tasks that someone else had decided needed to be done.

Re: The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

#43

Much of the west is getting older and getting sicker. How unsurprising. What even is the solution? Expand the already massive healthcare sector further? Where does the money for that come from?

What's the solution to the symptoms of low interest rates, low fertility rates and declining productivity?

Low interest rates are trivially solvable. Declining productivity seems entirely made up.

Re: The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

#44
post #3
post #2

Yes can confirm this is real. I know both German and Dutch nurses who say that the workload is incredibly high. One older nurse also said the pressure today is much higher than years ago.

I am not surprised. Healthcare costs have been rising faster than inflation for several years. It's a difficult sell to increase budgets, so we have to resort to these "invisible" cost cutting measures to try and stay afloat.

Healthcare costs have risen faster than inflation since the 1960s, when the government got involved with providing "free" healthcare.

Before then, costs tracked inflation.

Health care costs that are not provided "free" by the government have fallen, such as lasik eye surgery.

Re: The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

#45

Much of the west is getting older and getting sicker. How unsurprising. What even is the solution? Expand the already massive healthcare sector further? Where does the money for that come from?

I have thought that we should make entering the medical professions much easier. In order to become a nurse, you usually need a 4 year degree. This has two issues: 1. This is way to much time in the classroom. Much of that coursework simply isn't necessary. 2. You have people that would be good nurses piking other programs because they can't get passing marks in classes that are irrelevant to day to day nursing. Bind…

you usually need a 4 year degree

In the US, it's not worth going into because you have to put in hundreds of hours of clinicals which are unpaid, yet just as useful to the employer as a job. Unpaid internships are illegal, yet these are legal and mandatory.

Re: The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thought that we should make entering the medical professions much easier. In order to become a nurse, you usually need a 4 year degree. This has two issues: 1. This is way to much time in the classroom. Much of that coursework simply isn't necessary. 2. You have people that would be good nurses piking other programs because they can't get passing marks in classes that are irrelevant to day to day nursing. Bind…

That doesn't help if we don't have money to hire qualified nurses.

If nurses had lower up-front costs for their own training, I could imagine that allowing lower wages without them being worse off financially.

If we hand-wave away a lot of other market dynamics, I'm guessing.

Re: The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The narrative is wrong - the wages are low while the working times are exhausting. Half of each trainee's leave each year, while the nurses that can actually endure this shit are going into pension in the next 10 years. And the money is spent on SAP systems who further take time from the already overworked nurses, because they now have to spent a ton of time entering data into a computer with no benefits. Its not peo…

Yeah, also over here in Finland the amount of money our public sector spends on stuff like Microsoft licenses is insane. Then there's lots of other craziness, like buying a very expensive and totally unsuitable American healthcare management system from Epic, and then spending lots of money on license fees and customizing it for local purposes (the end result also sucks, and is universally hated by healthcare staff).…

Yes, I remember a post on the daily WTF ten years ago, about a terrible programming language called MUMPS. Real programming horror story.

That's Epic. That's the thing our highly paid acquisition experts demanded our health care systems buy. They are MUMPS.

Re: The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thought that we should make entering the medical professions much easier. In order to become a nurse, you usually need a 4 year degree. This has two issues: 1. This is way to much time in the classroom. Much of that coursework simply isn't necessary. 2. You have people that would be good nurses piking other programs because they can't get passing marks in classes that are irrelevant to day to day nursing. Bind…

So are you hoping to be treated by nurses who are worse academically than the ones we have now? Or are you hoping that "others" will be treated by them while increased supply depresses wages for the good ones that you think will treat you? Also being a nurse is a very hard job, most people wouldn't last a year as an ER nurse in the US.

We make them take classes like organic chemistry where they have to memorize the reaction of various metal catalysts. Calculus. Physics. These are all two semester classes that are considered hard in undergrad. And yet the nurse will never ever use what they learn in these classes outside them. They aren’t the ones synthesizing the drugs.

Re: The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will continue to happen as long as automation in health care is slower than in other sectors. It's due to Baumol's Cost Disease: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect The same is true for other sectors that struggle with automation like education.

So after every industry is fully automated and everyone has lost all their jobs, do we all just hold hands and walk into the sea together or...?

The way I see it, you have three choices, the government, corporations, or billionaires. It's an oversimplification of power in this world today, but those are your choices. Which one of those do you pick to clothe and feed and house you, after the singularity happens?

Re: The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

#50
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post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not surprised. Healthcare costs have been rising faster than inflation for several years. It's a difficult sell to increase budgets, so we have to resort to these "invisible" cost cutting measures to try and stay afloat.

> rising faster than inflation for several years Over here in Canada healthcare spending has been rising faster than general inflation more or less continuously since the 1960s. Seems to be generally true of many wealthy countries. More tech and therapies. And an ageing population. And probably other factors. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Health_care_cost_r...

Yeah hospital accounting is weird. I had family in the ER and one of their crappy meals was like $60, for basically just rice and canned vegetables on a tray. A single bandaid cost like $25 or something outrageous like that. This was pre-covid too. I'm sure that same meal is getting close to $100 by now.
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