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Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year

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Re: Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year

#521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nurses are paid well, relative to the average American salary. I don't think they're paid particularly well relative to the job's lifestyle requirements and latent stress levels, especially during a pandemic. Looking at my area (NYC), I'd have to take over a 50% pay cut from my engineering job to be "paid well" as a nurse. And I suspect my job is a lot less stressful.

While I don't doubt that nurses have very high stress jobs, the reason why you'd take a pay cut to become an nurse is because their job is a lot less technically difficult. I have some friends from university who became nurses, one of which I was roommates with for two years during school. I helped them study for 'their most difficult math test' and it was a relatively straightforward test on changing units. They wou…

Were your friends NPs, CNAs, or something else? There's a wide variety in nursing roles, with a corresponding wide range in technical difficulty and expected proficiency. The average NP is certainly more technically proficient than the average undergraduate with a CS degree, albeit not in a domain the CS undergraduate might understand.

Tangentially: I'm not sure what the relevancy of "passing a first year calculus class" is. Just about every BA/BS passes one, and I (a program analysis researcher) have never even remotely needed by calculus knowledge in my day job. I don't think it's a good proxy for technical skill whatsoever, given that "technical skill" is a domain-specific qualifier.

Re: Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year

#522
post #271
post #46

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…

> 4. Nurses are the catch all for jobs. Not enough aides? Nurses do the work.... The nurses aides would argue that they do the majority of the frontline work while getting paid a fraction of what the nurses make, and get even less credit.

Most of the nurses I talk with speak about a lack of nurse aides. When there isn't a nurse aide the nurses have to do that work. When I speak of a lack of them I know nurses who can go multiple consecutive shifts without an aide working the floor. When they do work there is 1 aide to a floor and can't cover everyone so the nurses do that work.

Re: Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year

#523

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…

Cronus devouring his children.

Re: Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year

#524
post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

preface: my parents are retired nurses and a big chunk of my family works in healthcare. It sounds like the issues nurses face are global and do not significantly change across different systems (the system in my country is completely different from USA) It probably comes down to the fact that this is a human problem and to solve it we must radically change the expectations around care and primarily being taken care…

Well, first you’d need to get over the idea it’s oriented around customer satisfaction or outcomes, which it doesn’t seem to be here in the US.

I don't know the US system so well to argue, I can only expand on what I meant: the job of healthcare is not to make people comfortable or make their wishes come true, HC, unfortunately, it's not a democracy.

What I've seen in the past 30 years is a gradual shift towards becoming some sort of wellness centers for disease: patients that complain about other patients, patients that complain about their accomodations, patients that complain about therapies, most of all patients relatives that want to have a say on everything that's going on up to the point that doctors simply do what asked to not waste too much time with them.

And to add insult to injury, all the legalities that made taking a decision virtually impossible without risking too much.

Of course there are situations were malpractice causes more damages than the illness itself and those must be reprimanded, we can't afford to disrupt trust in medicine in any way, but the results should be taken into higher consideration than the opinions.

ER, intensive care and other kinds of "hardcore" department should also be judged differently, just like it happens to military personnel who are not subject to regular justice while on duty.

Re: Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year

#525
post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The healthcare system in the US clearly has nothing to do with free markets considering how unbelievably opaque and regulated everything is.

There's no such thing as a "free market" for healthcare. The ability for consumers to exit a market is one of the prerequisites for the invisible hand effect. You can't exit the healthcare market.

You also can't exit the food market, or the shelter market, or the clothing market, yet those seem to work much better.

Re: Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year

#526
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, alas, found guilty: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/03/25/1088902...

Jfc that is terrible.

Is it though? Should a cop be prosecuted for accidentally killing an innocent civilian in the course of duty during a non violent traffic stop? I would argue that they should be. How many chances should a nurse get to accidentally kill someone? Do they only get prosecuted the second time? Third?

If you are responsible for the death of another person due to your own negligence then you should be prosecuted for a crime and be removed from any scenario where you are able to repeat that mistake.

Re: Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year

#527
Not only are nurses talking about leaving the industry, in the "newbie programmer" groups I help mentor in, there is an alarming number of people who were considering going in to health care/nursing, who are now seriously reconsidering their options, or changing majors in college mid-way through to move into technology/programming.

I guess my point is, not only is the current healthcare labor market at stake, but hiring/pay/working conditions now are having upstream impacts on the labor pipeline of people coming into the market, or evaluating entering healthcare. Having recently gone to the ER with my toddler, I can tell you this is not an area you want the market going for lowest bidder when you do have to use healthcare services.

Re: Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year

#528
You see these numbers come out of nursing and teaching regularly. But they both have very high retention rates. Because in both cases, people stay because they would feel bad if they left. They're not there for the money. This is why they're so badly paid. This is why I didn't go into teaching: you cannot compete with people who will work for emotional rewards instead of cash.

Re: Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year

#529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, that’s exactly how unfettered “free market” capitalism operates. The end game is big companies end up controlling everything, including the regulations in order to tip the scales in their favor.

Regulatory capture is the issue that needs to be solved. Not free markets. Free markets are the most efficient way for information to be transferred throughout the system. Stricter campaign finance laws, ending revolving-door politics, etc. But putting the blame on free markets seems like a mistake.

> Free markets are the most efficient way for information to be transferred throughout the system.

What do you think of VC-funded "growth" companies that lose money for years while providing products/services at below cost? Is this a case of the free market working or of it being subverted?

Re: Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year

#530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jfc that is terrible.

But the electorate continues to reward "tough on crime" prosecutors. Their incentives are all towards maxing out the savagery towards defendants, systemic repercussions be damned. From the article: > Janie Harvey Garner, the founder of Show Me Your Stethoscope, a nursing group on Facebook with more than 600,000 members, worries the conviction will have a chilling effect on nurses disclosing their own errors or near e…

> But the electorate continues to reward "tough on crime" prosecutors.

Do you believe that people who vote for "tough on crime" prosecutors are seeking harsh punishment of mistakes?

Or do they want criminals acting in malice to have the book thrown at them so other people aren't needless victims?

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