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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

#621
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…

The one I think you are missing is that nurses are and have been overworked for a WHILE now. (that's what I get from /r/nursing) Hospitals have made sure they hire JUST ENOUGH nurses to cover shifts and no more. With covid hitting, this blew out the number of nurses needed resulting in a lot of "I know you've already worked 60 hours, but can you do another 20? we are short!". Rather than hiring permanent people or up…

A good friend of mine couldn't get a single 3 day weekend approved (so one day of PTO) several months in advance.

Then I open my recruiter inbox and I see like 20 new B2C healthcare startups.

It really feels like the entire economy is designed to prevent problems being solved. Some people in healthcare are making massive amounts of money and the quality of life of everyone that performs the actual work has taken a nosedive when it was already a really crappy situation.

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

#622
This isn't a problem that can be solved by an IT solution. Nurses have more patients assigned to them than what they can manage. They don't need another system of forms and workflows to fill out in addition to their overloaded plate. If anything, the solution is the opposite of an IT solution in that hospitals must hire more nurses and stop following the recommended lean-management staffing numbers provided by software.

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

#623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one I think you are missing is that nurses are and have been overworked for a WHILE now. (that's what I get from /r/nursing) Hospitals have made sure they hire JUST ENOUGH nurses to cover shifts and no more. With covid hitting, this blew out the number of nurses needed resulting in a lot of "I know you've already worked 60 hours, but can you do another 20? we are short!". Rather than hiring permanent people or up…

This ended up being the last straw for one of my friends who was a nurse. He kept getting vacation requests denied due to lack of staffing, yet if he asked if they were looking to hire, the answer was always No. He was super lucky and had some early cryptocurrency investments pay off big, so he decided he was done with it retired. He said that he loved helping people as a nurse, but not at the cost of his own physica…

That describes me, though in tech. Trying to step back in to tech and recently had interview. After I explained parenting time schedule, HR guy said everbody works 60 hour weeks every week so there is not a role for me.

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

#624
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The solution isn't that Radonda Vought, who killed a patient through a string of crassly negligent actions should walk free - one would like to see the whole chain of command be given serious prison time. It's clear that patient safety at Vanderbilt isn't a priority - training and safety culture reflects that. Strange to see that HN, which is generally suspicious of copaganda, falls for very transparent nursepaganda.

Its the strong libertarian vibe. They think consequences shouldn't exist, and the dead guy can take his money elsewhere.

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

#625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you can even be personally liable for HIPPA security violations as a user or dev of a healthcare system. That seems a bit scary. I agree that regulation persuades people not to do things out of fear of breaking the law. We see this in it's intentional form with regulation of other things such as abortion, guns, etc. Put so many laws in place that risk of accidentally breaking one and receiving an extensive…

> I believe you can even be personally liable for HIPPA security violations as a user or dev of a healthcare system. Welcome to being an engineer, if that's what you want to call yourself. The engineer who approves a bridge design can be held liable if it collapses due to a design fault.

One difference is that HIPAA has a bunch of statutory penalties for "technical violations" that might or might not harm anyone. For example, if a call center staff discloses patient information to, say, the child or parent of a patient, that comes with an automatic fine and (potentially) jail time.

Another aspect is that certain HIPAA allowances for data usage require a lawyer's expertise, not an engineer's. For example, can a health insurer use patient data to train a model w/o first obtaining patient consent? If the model will be used for "healthcare operations" (i.e., adjudicating claims), you might argue that the answer is yes. If the same model will be used for suggesting treatment options to doctors, you might argue that the answer is no. If you answer wrongly, you are hit with a statutory fine.

It's like having a fine for painting the bridge the wrong color because there is a law that bridges must be green, but you used lime. Not because you're worried about the bridge collapsing, but because the law says so.

Generally, civil engineers don't need to worry about fines or jail as long as things stay up.

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

#626
post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hospitals have made sure they hire JUST ENOUGH nurses to cover shifts and no more. This is a two-edged sword. If you hire more than you need, the nurses' hours will be cut during normal situations and they won't make enough money. If hospitals don't cut extra hours and instead keep the staff on the clock, a public scandal will erupt surrounding well-paid medical professionals sitting around doing nothing.

> a public scandal will erupt surrounding well-paid medical professionals sitting around doing nothing I don't think that's true. Increasing the amount of nurses means simply increasing the amount of care. If you have twice as many nurses, you'll have twice as much care for your patients. No way nurses would be sitting around doing nothing.

That's not how healthcare works. That it is does not function that way is why free-at-point-of-use public healthcare systems are capable of working.

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

#627
post #587
post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think that this is just one example of many across a ton of disciplines where people like Nurses basically are forced to deal with costs and responsibilities offloaded onto them from above the responsibility chain. Resources are eaten up at the top of the chain to their benefit and costs are offloaded down the chain until it reaches people like Nurses at the end of the line who have to deal with it because…

I think this is due to Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy : https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html "In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agric…

You just explained something I saw on many establishing subreddits!

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

#628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one I think you are missing is that nurses are and have been overworked for a WHILE now. (that's what I get from /r/nursing) Hospitals have made sure they hire JUST ENOUGH nurses to cover shifts and no more. With covid hitting, this blew out the number of nurses needed resulting in a lot of "I know you've already worked 60 hours, but can you do another 20? we are short!". Rather than hiring permanent people or up…

Yes and No. On an individual basis, nurses are overworked because they choose to be and their employers allow for it. The standard work week is 3 12 hour shifts, which is much less than most professionals work. Like a retail or warehouse worker, they are expected to clock out as soon as possible and leave when the shift ends. Those of us with salary jobs knows how difficult that can be in our arrangements and how muc…

> Capacity is the problem

Capacity is generally limited by staffing, not space or actual beds. When hospitals report how many "beds" they have available, they're generally not talking about the furniture.

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

#629
post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure you can. You can decide that you are not going to enrich an industry that basically does nothing for you in the long run. Everyone ends up dead, and I for one do not plan to spend my final years under constant care from a industry that is designed to drain every last dollar I have before I pass on.

I think the majority of people say something to that effect at some point in their life. But the only real alternative is suicide of some kind, and how many people actually follow through with suicide?

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

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jfc that is terrible.

Worse, the family of the victim had apparently forgiven the nurse for her mistake and didn't want criminal prosecution. This was driven purely by the state prosecutor.

Consider this: someone drives without paying proper attention and kills someone. It's time for victim impact statements, and relative after relative asks the court for lenience on the driver because the victim was a drunk and a wifebeater, the world is better off without him.

Not sure that that is a good idea, justice is about more than just those immediately affected by a crime

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