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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

#781

Post by TomSwirly »

ayngg wrote: post #577
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…

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…

> courts systems are overwhelmed and understaffed so criminals just enter and exit like a revolving door,

You're delusional. America has more people in jail, serving longer sentences, than _any country in history_.

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

#782

Post by tsol »

pbuzbee wrote: post #573

Is this a shock? - Demanding work: 12 hour shifts, irregular schedules, night shifts, physically exhausting, limited breaks (including bathroom/water!) - High responsibility with unsafe conditions. You're literally responsible for people's lives. Poor staffing ratios stretch you thin and make you more likely to make mistakes. And if you make a mistake, you're at huge risk for litigation... and now criminal consequenc…

The pay was good enough last year, what changed? In my opinon nursing has always been a difficult job, yet they've always had people lining up to become nurses. So it must be more than just 'the job is too demanding'.

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

#783

Post by krisoft »

dham wrote: post #775
nradov wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you go home and sleep between working on on new years eve and new years day? If yes then what you had is not what the complaint is about.

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

#784

Post by Terry_Roll »

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…

>3. IT systems that they have to use were designed by people who have not talked with the workers who use them. They may have been designed with laws and compliance in mind. Nurses aren't the people who choose or pay for these systems. But, they use them a lot (maybe the most) and it's obvious they weren't taken into account when designing the UX. It's maddening for them.

>This one is big for product designers. Often we listen to the people who pay for it and miss out on the people who actually have to use it.

Thats an interesting comment because I know the main developer for one of the most popular hospital systems used throughout Europe and its popular because its good.

Saying that, I also know there are medical consultants at a world famous hospital who dont really know how to program but because of their position have got their software in use when it perhaps shouldnt be.

I know alot of US programmers doing various medical systems for local hospitals and health care regions with various standards of programming skills.

Like you I also know of people in various roles, from world famous multi millionaire consultants to nurses on the front line. Every team & dept is different. Sometimes its a managerial problem at the top of the health trust, other times its just the team and low level management.

Saying that there is a culture of taking a sicky probably because they see consultants putting private work before NHS work and they see the wages some of these consultants get paid and Google Scholar, PubMed, DrugBank etc keeps highlighting the inadequacies of the teaching, ie they dont keep up to date, some areas appear to be decades behind the science other areas are within a few years of the latest research.

Too much reliance on drug companies when superior non patentable solutions already exist.

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

#785

Post by anonporridge »

tsol wrote: post #782
pbuzbee wrote: post #573

Is this a shock? - Demanding work: 12 hour shifts, irregular schedules, night shifts, physically exhausting, limited breaks (including bathroom/water!) - High responsibility with unsafe conditions. You're literally responsible for people's lives. Poor staffing ratios stretch you thin and make you more likely to make mistakes. And if you make a mistake, you're at huge risk for litigation... and now criminal consequenc…

The pay was good enough last year, what changed? In my opinon nursing has always been a difficult job, yet they've always had people lining up to become nurses. So it must be more than just 'the job is too demanding'.

Pure speculation, but if I had to hazard a guess, it's because the job is becoming increasingly inhumane.

More and more, nurses have to act like robots to remain in compliance, and that's not what any of them signed up for, and the increasing lack of intangible reward that comes from caring for people and creating a human connection, means they demand more explicit monetary reward for temporarily suppressing their humanity to do the job.

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

#786

Post by tsol »

tmcw wrote: post #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 othe…

I don't mean to by cynical, but this is kind of my feeling. Throughout the pandemic I saw story and story about nurses getting overworked and being underappreciated. There was lots of talk of a nurse exodus.. and yet it's never happened. Even now it's just talk of a possible exodus. Maybe there are just no similar fields to switch into with comparable pay, but it seems as though nurses are sticking it out in the grand scheme. Are plenty of older nurses retiring? Yes. Are some younger nurses also leaving the field after being burned? Yep. But for the majority of nurses, the pay is still worth all the difficulty they see. Hearing about a co-worker getting attacked by an anti-vax patient is alarming, but until it happens to you you're not gonna make any major life changes to avoid that

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

#787

Post by phil21 »

bumby wrote: post #707
kedean wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> re-designing a layout that minimizes travel time for nurses when they are delivering to patients.

I think talking about micro-optimizations like this misses the forest through the trees.

It's neat and cool. Fun to wring out those last bits of efficiency. But the fact you even need to discuss it shows how hiring adequate amount of bedside staff is the absolute last thing any medical system will do.

> revert to simple heuristics that left them understaffed at some times while being overstaffed at others

Showing that they were better than modern day automated shift planning.

I will submit that if your hospital floor staff is not 50% idle on your average given fully-staffed boring day, you are understaffed. Only extremely exceptional events should cause your staff to be booked 100%. When it happens it should be root cause analyzed and be immediate cause for executive concern.

The trope of card playing nurses should be true, because of all industries there are - you want surge capacity in healthcare. Both physically speaking in terms of warm bodies available, as well as mentally speaking in brains not being stressed to their max the entire shift.

I understand these ideas don't end up with maximal efficiency. I am likely naive as well - but it's pretty clear that hospital systems are being operated in an intentional manner to keep staffing cut to the bone right up until the point the system or people break.

This doesn't just hold true for healthcare, it's endemic in a lot of service industries where the bottom tier employees are expected to live in service of the profession and take up all the slack from above.

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

#788

Post by landemva »

notch656a wrote: post #745
landemva wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That sounds perfectly fair actually. You explained you can't work 60 hours a week and he explained it's not the role for you. Complete honesty and the choice was made not to do the deal. You shouldn't get special hours or treatment for being a parent.

I agree with you, and I wanted them to know my needs so we all succeed. Hilariously the guy never asked my pay needs (low) and talked to me about the top of the pay range. I didn't care to correct him since the expectation was overtime all the time for everybody. Looks like a management culture I don't want to struggle against, so I can look elsewhere.

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

#789

Post by cryptonector »

titanomachy wrote: post #594
Aperocky wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they can 10x their profits by only serving elderly clients. I knew of certain defunct malls that decided to get rid of things that doesn't make money and only keep the high profit inventories. Soon people stopped coming and they went under..

If we stop providing health care to young people, then everyone will just die and there won't be any old people left to profit off of.

No, more likely you'd see a ton of alternative medicine and self-diagnostic/treatment options for young people. I'm not entirely sure that I wouldn't want this.

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

#790

Post by makeitdouble »

vlunkr wrote: post #387

I'd like to know what "considering leaving" means in this study. I consider leaving my profession every time a React hook misbehaves and locks up my browser, but I'm not actually going to leave. 90% seems way too high to be people who are actively wanting to leave.

90% leaving might be too high, but even of a tenth actually manages to move on it will have a huge impact.

More importantly, a lot of them will be leaving though burnout and depression (a significant number of hospital staff is already on this course).

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