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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

#701

Post by bumby »

ben0x539 wrote: post #689
bumby wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fix is one that Hospital admins don't want. Pay your nurses more and hire more As someone who worked in hospitals to help redesign their processes, this one piqued my interest. For every project I worked on (and I mean literally every one), the team lead wanted to jump to the solution that they just need the ability to hire more people. In the rare instances where they were able to convince hospital admins to d…

i think that argument works a lot better in a field where they arent bullying people into working overtime near constantly

Perhaps. But again, why is the overtime needed?

If it's because it provides more patient care beyond what a nurse can provide in a good system, it might be a valid point. But if it's because the system is fundamentally broken, I'm skeptical that hiring more people will actually fix anything. From personal experience, it will only create a lag that will require the same need for more hires down the road.

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

#702

Post by gruez »

mikkergp wrote: post #291
chimprich wrote: post #203

My wife is a nurse in the NHS. She actually saves people from cancer, or at least prolongs their lives. Her work is difficult, with huge responsibility. She gets a pay cut this year in real terms. I make slight improvements to computer systems. In most of the jobs I've done, despite my best efforts to work for reasonably ethical companies, I've not been convinced I've made anyone's lives better. Yet my salary is 2-3…

It's an interesting problem, because we currently align economic 'productivity' and pay rather than social value and pay, which is efficient since we don't have to redistribute resources between industries or roles, and resource redistribution is a dirty word, at least in America. My wife is a doctor and I make significantly more than her working as an SRE, when her job is significantly more difficult (particularly e…

>It's an interesting problem, because we currently align economic 'productivity' and pay rather than social value and pay

How do you define and measure "social value"?

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

#703

Post by robertlagrant »

mfer wrote: 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…

We make really usable software for nurses, and they absolutely love it. I think the effort we go to is totally unnecessary to achieve that, as - just as you say - most medical software is so bad from a user perspective.

Anyway, it's nice to make software like that :-)

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

#704

Post by maxerickson »

pojzon wrote: post #649
notch656a wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree nurses DESERVE to be paid more (I'm not sure if the economics bear out but they're certainly as WORTHY as many other professions), but wouldn't the fact that these nurses continue to work in nursing despite considering leaving bolster the argument even further that they are receiving adequate compensation? Staying when you want to leave indicates there's enough compensation to 'make it worth it' at l…

Most of those ppl cannot leave due to various obligations. If you want to see an indocator of terrible compensation - check why pretty much noone (at least here) wants to be a nurse. Profession is rapidly aging because new ppl are not joining. And they are not joining because work is hard and pay is terrible. The whole Healthcare system if we dont get robots in place fast is going to crumble soon like a house of card…

The US has lots of people interested in nursing and not enough infrastructure to turn them into nurses:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/10/25/1047290...

The work is hard, but the pay is well above many other jobs and there are jobs everywhere.

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

#705

Post by pbuzbee »

BeetleB wrote: post #665
cogman10 wrote: post #416

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…

> Rather than hiring permanent people or upping salary, Hospitals have instead elected to just use travel nurses and an extreme premium so as to avoid any salary increases. In case people want an idea of what travel nurses made during COVID... https://khn.org/news/highly-paid-traveling-nurses-fill-staff... > In April, she packed her bags for a two-month contract in then-COVID hot spot New Jersey, as part of what she…

Travel nursing is definitely a great way to turn the tables if you can do it. The money you can make is clearly quite high! I fully support those nurses using travel nursing to get greater pay.

But it also isn't an option for everyone. Many don't have the flexibility to switch to travel nursing. For example, you may not be able to get a nearby contract and may not be able to travel (e.g. because you have children). Plus, traveling isn't an option for new nurses without experience, who now have to work in hospitals that are hemorrhaging experienced nurses to traveling AND have worse staffing ratios than ever.

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

#706

Post by ikiris »

cogman10 wrote: post #416
mfer wrote: 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…

for those that aren't aware, a while here reads as at least 40 years, and it gets worse every year, especially the last 10 or so.

With additional nuance that this kind of thing used to be protected a bit by the additional guard of a pharmacist. The automated dispensary changed those criminally liable people into a checkbox bypass that this nurse (and from the sounds of it, the rest of them by effect of policy) regularly bypassed.

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

#707

Post by bumby »

kedean wrote: post #697
bumby wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fix is one that Hospital admins don't want. Pay your nurses more and hire more As someone who worked in hospitals to help redesign their processes, this one piqued my interest. For every project I worked on (and I mean literally every one), the team lead wanted to jump to the solution that they just need the ability to hire more people. In the rare instances where they were able to convince hospital admins to d…

You're describing Brook's Law from The Mythical Man-Month. It was an observation of collaboration in software engineering specifically, and it cannot be applied universally to every industry. Really, anything that is highly parallel (medicine, teaching, stocking shelves, waitstaff, deliveries) can benefit from hiring more people until you reach saturation, and medicine isn't there or we wouldn't be having the convers…

It's interesting because they aren't software engineering rules. If anything, they are industrial engineering rules that pre-date software and certainly older than the mentioned book from 1975. The approach I was using was developed specifically for healthcare and with great effect in some organizations. I know this is HN, but I think it's an error to assume everyone is coming at a problem from a software perspective.

>What solution would you suggest other than more people?

It obviously depends on the situation but most of the time it comes down to reducing process waste. That may be automation through software where a nurse was hired specifically to only generate reports 40 hours a week, to re-designing a layout that minimizes travel time for nurses when they are delivering to patients. My experience with the staffing situation is that managers did not know how to staff to meet the needs of their patient loads and just revert to simple heuristics that left them understaffed at some times while being overstaffed at others.

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

#708

Post by ikiris »

landemva wrote: post #623
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah the incredulous looks I get when I turn down gigs at "unlimited" PTO positions are just wild.

Like what did you expect to happen? We're not stupid.

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

#709

Post by [deleted] »

rectang wrote: post #463
aiisjustanif wrote: post #429

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…

[deleted]

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

#710

Post by ethbr0 »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #565
Wistar wrote: 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.

> one would like to see the whole chain of command be given serious prison time

Absolutely. To each according to their authority.

RaDonda Vaught made a mistake, and admitted it, repeatedly, in multiple interviews.

But that mistake was only partly because of her free will. Vanderbilt University Medical Center incentivized her to make that choice, for their own profit, and with control over her employment.

RaDonda Vaught goes to prison.

VUMC pays a fine and nobody goes to prison.

I think HN takes a dim view of a company holding someone's contract in their hands, saying "Do something illegal or I tear this up," and then blaming the employee when everything explodes.

They're playing chicken with patients' lives, and passing off the charges to their employees when they lose.

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