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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

#771
This is the direct and extremely unalterable consequence of one decision, to base our medical system on profit, instead of results, or capabilities. We've left a matter of national security in the hands of rent seekers.

The tragic insertion of a middle layer, the insurance industry (AKA Death Panels), makes it even more tragic and inefficient.

You can not seek profits in a competitive environment without reducing every cost to the bare minimum. Of course they are going to cut staff costs, and the number of properly staffed beds to the bare minimum, it minimizes costs. If a surge happens, they're happy to pay a little bit of a premium in the cost side for extra staffing. It's more than compensated by the extra billing.

But the recent public health emergency was a seiche, a tsunami, a pulse of unanticipated magnitude. (Unanticipated in the minds of those looking to meet this quarter's numbers, not in the minds of long term strategic thinkers).

The wrong type of people are in charge of health care in the US, and our nation will not be secure until this changes.

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

#772
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…

>3. IT systems that they have to use were designed by people who have not talked with the workers who use them.

Every time the computers went down at a friends ER, the waiting room emptied out as the staff were able to use paper forms and just get their jobs done, instead of being forced through thousands of menu clicks and choices that made no sense.

EVERY SINGLE TIME -- Epic or as I call it... the Epic Failure. I always give my condolences to staff forced to use it.

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

#773
Similarly via a quick Google search:

- "Almost HALF Of San Francisco Residents Considering Leaving City" (according to survey of 500)

- "One in three New Yorkers Considering Leaving The State"

- "Over Half Of Young Lawyers Considering Quitting by 2027, IBA Report."

Look for X people considering Y, and you'll find them. Considering is cheap.

The awful experience of nurses, absolutely, true. But this, like so many others, is a silly poll that doesn't say anything.

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

#774

Not surprising. My partner is a DNP and has pretty strongly considered leaving the entire profession. From my perspective, the entire healthcare industry is set up to treat any frontline worker without an MD after their name as completely expendable, nothing more than a row in a spreadsheet that can be optimized for middle management to hit next quarter's bonus targets. You can meet all metrics management sets out fo…

Same story from my partner who is a PA. The private practice she worked for for years got acquired by a big name system and over the next 2 years they “optimized” a job she loved so far that she had to leave.

By the end she was seeing twice as many patients a day as before with no time to do admin stuff at work even after skipping her lunch break so she also had to do more work when she got home. The reward for doing double the work as before? A 10% pay increase barely above inflation. Meanwhile a few coworkers left and no new ones were hired so the workload just kept increasing.

It puts providers in such a bad position because the only way to push back is to drop the level of care, which has real human consequences.

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

#775
post #762
post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Daughter was born on the winter solstice this year. We had a broken sink in our hospital room and someone came by to fix it. He had a trainee with him. Who was mentioning that he was scheduled to work New Years Eve and then again the next day on New years day. A 3rd shift followed by an immediate 1st shift. He was casually talking to the guy training him and mentioned that had to be a mistake. The guy in charge sa…

Hospitals operate 24×7. Someone has to work those shifts. Usually it ends up being the employee with the least seniority. What's the alternative?

My first year at the movie theater I had to work Christmas Eve, Day, New years eve and day, all for minimum wage. People are just more entitled now a days.

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

#776
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…

>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 trying to stop nurses from talking about pay.

I think non-performance-based pay is something endemic to many female-dominated professions. My wife used to work in childcare, and it did her head in that she was paid less than complete idiots who'd been working there longer than she had.

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

#777
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…

I had no idea that Pournelle was claiming credit for that!

He nicked it from Robert Michels, who wrote about the Iron Law of Oligarchies in 1911: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

I was reading some old Analog magazines the other day, and man, Pournelle was one deranged man in his "non-fiction".

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

#778
post #627
post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Here's the original author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

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

#779
post #762
post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Daughter was born on the winter solstice this year. We had a broken sink in our hospital room and someone came by to fix it. He had a trainee with him. Who was mentioning that he was scheduled to work New Years Eve and then again the next day on New years day. A 3rd shift followed by an immediate 1st shift. He was casually talking to the guy training him and mentioned that had to be a mistake. The guy in charge sa…

Hospitals operate 24×7. Someone has to work those shifts. Usually it ends up being the employee with the least seniority. What's the alternative?

The problem is not that they had to work on those days.

The problem is that they had two consecutive shifts.

The alternative is that the hospital hires enough people so they can schedule them such that everybody has time to go home relax and sleep after they are done with a shift.

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

#780

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.

Lot's of better paid gigs with better working conditions where you aren't personally legally liable if you write a bug. I don't especially care about what job title some board thinks I'm allowed to use.
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