401–410 of 1001 posts
This is pretty much universal in my experience. As a dev, it always seems to boil down to these. It's amazing how the business doesn't know their processes, can't document them accurately, or simply don't care to analyze and document them. Garbage requirements become a garbage system.
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Nursing won't be automated soon, but automated systems will be used for things that nurses used to do (with predictably worse results).
Nurses do a lot of menial tasks that they are overqualified for. Could those not be freed up by automation so that nurses can do the high-skill tasks they are uniquely qualified to do? I think you're right in the sense that I expect we won't shoot to automate the menial tasks first, and instead will let our hubris guide us to automate the high-skill tasks. But speaking optimistically, there's a lot of productive auto…
I have a close relation that works for one of the oldest pediatric hospitals in the country. It was recently revealed that they will be shuttering almost all pediatric services in the next year because they can 10x their profits by only serving elderly clients. The entire purpose of this organization was to provide pediatric healthcare, and it wasn’t losing money… Sometimes, it feels like we’re min-maxing ourselves t…
We’re facing some massive generational crises at this point, and it feels like the only solution is to wait for the current leadership to die off, and hope the gen x’ers fix it. The WWII generation fixed the ozone hole, but their kids didn’t lift a finger for global warming. Subsequent generations are scrambling to pick up the pieces for our kids, while crap like this, and our rapidly collapsing democracy keep sabota…
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> 2. Patients in COVID have become downright mean. Add this to the problems nurses have management and doctors (who are often rude and arrogant) and it's a poor culture. The quality of the environment, from a mental health standpoint, is on the decline. Mean customers, and rude coworkers? I sympathize, but this is a reality in a lot of industries. I have no reason to believe that healthcare here is worse than average…
I've spoken with nurses who've had a variety of other jobs at other types of places. They are consistent in telling me that working as a nurse is a worse environment in the way they are treated. The example stories they have shared are the type of thing I can't relate to and I've worked in software, general engineering, food service, construction, and tech support (I answered calls for 3 years).
She's been punched in the face by a patient, she's had coworkers who sabotage each other due to personal vendettas, she's had bosses go on racist tirades in meetings, and on and on and on. As I remind my wife whenever she has a particularly awful day, there's a reason why the classic NP-hard CS problem is literally named the Nurse Scheduling Problem[1]. And yes, she's considering a career change.
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Insurance is the only industry where they agree to pay for something (in this case, "medical care"), but then after service has been rendered can decide to pay less, or not pay at all, or stop paying that provider altogether, etc. This combined with hospitals being run by non-physicians*, and people thinking being able to Google and read WebMD qualifies them to argue with their doctor about treatment plans**, healthc…
As a quick counter-point to *, there is another sub-problem with healthcare/doctors in the US, where often patients with chronic illnesses or not-easily-testable conditions have to fight hard for doctors to take them seriously. The why of this varies a lot from what I've seen, but includes: - an attitude of "most patients are just trying to wring medications out of you" - an ego-hit of "if I didn't make the diagnosis…
I have found it helpful to approach it in more of a teamwork-like mentality. Don't just read WebMD and try to diagnose yourself - journal your symptoms, observe the trends, record data. If it seems like it points to a specific condition hop on Google Scholar and look for some legitimate new research the average doctor may not have heard about. Print that out and then when you go in show them and ask questions without attempting to specifically diagnose yourself.
You could be totally wrong but with some background info your doctor is much more likely to accurately diagnose and take you seriously.
A lot of us are saying we need to increase the pay of nurses, but we also believe that medical care is too expensive. So, where is all that money going? There are a lot of flippant answers but they never seem to lead anywhere actionable.
But yeah, in general, this is a problem (healthcare in general, healthcare expenses, nurse job experience) where almost all other countries with similar wealth are doing so much better than us, it shouldn't be that mysterious to solve it, right? It's not like, who knows if it's even possible to do better! Like, we know it is... figuring out what the difference between them and us isn't trivial, but it should be easier than something there isn't a model for.
The most obvious difference would seem to be how insurance (and universal coverage thereof) is handled.
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> This one is big for product designers. I think this is looking at the problem wrong. The problem is that implementing positive change in these systems is impossible for reasons far outside the control of any product designer or developer currently on the team. This software is old, has byzantine requirements, probably cut costs all over the place, and conceived in a board room without the benefit of an adequate dev…
> I think this is looking at the problem wrong. The problem is that implementing positive change in these systems is impossible for reasons far outside the control of any product designer or developer currently on the team. A developer working on something is different from a product designer. For product designer I don't mean a UI/UX developer. I mean someone empowered to design the thing. This is often a leader or…
I've spent a fair amount of time talking with nurses about the problems. I'm related to a bunch of people who are nurses across disciplines (ER, ICU, med/surg, etc). It's been enlightening hearing them talk about the problems... 1. Many new nurses make the same or more and long time nurses. It's frustrating when the nurse in charge with the most experience is making less than new nurses. Some hospitals are even tryin…
[1]https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/03/24/1088397...
Using an anecdotal source - My Wife (ICU RN) this is sounds right. Outside of the existing issues with Bedside nursing (long days, physically demanding) - the primary issue is staffing. Pre-pandemic the ratios were already bad but now many are leaving for travel contracts which carry significantly better wages. It quickly becomes a loop where employees leave for Travel Contracts, and then can only be backfilled with…
My wife (ER/Trauma RN) feels the same way. They will need to double the pay of non-travel nurses to get through this.
High stress environment, stagnant wages unless you're a travel nurse, underappreciated during the pandemic, and having friends turn on you because they associate you with some crazy conspiracy theory. These are all reasons I've heard of career nurses quitting and going into other industries.