Survey for my research paper on nursing shortage - please respond

JenKatt · Nov 19, 2002

1. Please state your age. 25

2. Are you male or female? Female

3. Please state your family status, i.e. married, divorced, single, widowed. Married

4. Do you have children? If so, how many? None, unless you count my husband

5. Please state the city and state in which you reside. Tampa, Fl

6. What is your racial/ethnic background? (This is an optional question - you do not have to answer it.) Caucasian

7. What type of degree do you have? BSN

8. What age were you when you obtained your degree? 21

9. Do you have a specialty? Use to be NICU and Peds, now Med-Surg, will be going back to NICU and Peds

10. What type of employment setting do you work in? i.e. hospital, nursing home or extended-care facility, community and public health, nursing education, ambulatory care (physician's office, nurse's office)? United States Air Force Hospital

11. How many years have you been a nurse? 3 1/2

12. What is your present salary? (This is an optional question - you do not have to answer it.) 47K, roughly

13. What do you like most about being a nurse? Doing something, being something

14. What do you like least about being a nurse? Administration

15. What specific conditions would you like to see improved? (Please list in order of importance, #1 being the most important.)

1. Salary

2. Patient ratios

3. Administration blowing up and elaving us alone to do our jobs

4. Better report with MDs

16. How has the nursing shortage affected you personally? I would love to hear any stories you would like to share.

When I was a civilian, every week people were staying for mandatory overtime, working 16 hours. One night, as I was getting ready to leave at 11pm, the evening supervisors called and said that they had to pull the float nurse back because PICU was short staffed, so one of us had to stay. It was my turn. I was suppose to work the next evening also. As I was leaving at 7am, my boss called the charge nurse. I had already told my charge nurse to inform the NM (nurse manager) that I would need that evening off. I had already been up for 24 hours. The charge nurse did so. I was told that they would find coverage. Anyhow, I called into work at 11am, when it would be the latest for me to call out sick. They hadn't found coverage. So i called out sick due to insomina and a migrane.

Two weeks later, I was talking with the dear NM when she informed me that I had been written up for calling out sick. She stated that lack of sleep is no reason to call out sick.

17. Do you plan to stay in the field of nursing? If not, what field are you planning to switch to? Yes

18. Would you recommend nursing as a good field to go into? Yes, for some people. It's not for everyone

19. Would you want a family member to be treated at the facility at which you work? Yes

20. What recommendations would you make to deal with the nursing shortage? Offer better salary, nurse to patient ratios and incentives.... Also attempt to change the perception of nursing

If you need anything else, email or PM me

Hope the papaer comes out ok

KC CHICK · Nov 20, 2002

1. 29

2. Female

3. Married

4. No children

5. Kansas City, Missouri

6. Caucasian

7. ADN

8. 27

9. Started as a grad nurse in Surgery, so yes. Currently work in telemetry.

10. hospital

11. 1.5 yrs

12. 19.30/hr base plus 3.00/hr shift diff for nights and 2.00/hr for weekends. My usual schedule is Fri, Sat, and Sun nights.

13. I like the personal satisfaction and the increased self confidence it's given me. Most of my patients and other staff are a pleasure to work with.

14. Seeing what can happen to the human body....what people suffer through. Seeing a wife being told her husband coded and died unexpectedly....and watching her reaction.

15. The most important improvement that needs to be made on my current floor is staffing for the night shift. Most times we are just as busy as the day shift, yet we are expected to handle 2-3 more patients. We get a lot of admits at night.. sometimes discharges too.

16. The nursing shortage enabled me to secure a position in a specialty area directly out of school..from what I hear, surgery has not taken new grads in the past. The shortage also gives me the opportunity to pick up overtime shifts when I want them.

17. I plan on staying in nursing. I also plan to furhter my education and get my BSN and CRNA training.

18. I recommend it.

19. Yes. We get compliments many times for how we treat our patients in our facility. The only time I would steer a family member away is for a SERIOUS cardiac problem. You see, we have a cath lab, but no open heart surgical program. If something happens to the patient in cath lab, or if something is found that needs immediate surgical intervention, the patient has to be relocated to an 'open heart' facility.

20. Well, more $$$$ of course!! Also, more public money is needed for students in nursing. I think that might influence people to go into nursing programs.

Anne

kmchugh · Nov 20, 2002

NURSING SURVEY

1.Please state your age. 43

2.Are you male or female? Male

3.Please state your family status, i.e. married, divorced, single, widowed. Married

4.Do you have children? If so, how many? Yes, three children, one on the way.

5.Please state the city and state in which you reside. Andover, Kansas

6.What is your racial/ethnic background? (This is an optional question - you do not have to answer it.) Cauc

7.What type of degree do you have? Master of Science, Nurse Anesthesia.

8.What age were you when you obtained your degree? Bachelor's Degree, 37, Master's degree 41.

9.Do you have a specialty? Anesthesia.

10.What type of employment setting do you work in? i.e. hospital, nursing home or extended-care facility, community and public health, nursing education, ambulatory care (physician's office, nurse's office)? Hospital

11.How many years have you been a nurse? 6

12.What is your present salary? (This is an optional question - you do not have to answer it.) $100,000 + overtime and benefits.

13.What do you like most about being a nurse? The difference I make in people's lives.

14.What do you like least about being a nurse? Hours (working as much as 70 hours a week.)

15.What specific conditions would you like to see improved? (Please list in order of importance, #1 being the most important.)

1. Hours

2. Respect

3 Pay (for staff nurses).

16.How has the nursing shortage affected you personally? I would love to hear any stories you would like to share. More hours. We are even more short CRNA's than most of the rest of the nursing fields.

17.Do you plan to stay in the field of nursing? If not, what field are you planning to switch to? I'll stay.

18.Would you recommend nursing as a good field to go into? Only if the person was planning to become an advanced practice nurse. Staff nursing is too underpaid, too thankless for most to want to make a career out of it.

19.Would you want a family member to be treated at the facility at which you work? Depends on who the physician, nurses, etc were who were doing the care. Generally, yes.

20.What recommendations would you make to deal with the nursing shortage? Increase respect for nurses by all, with support for staff nurses from hospital administration. Pay nurses a respectable salary. Treat nurses as valuable members of the team, rather than as slave labor.

Please feel free to add any comments that you feel would be helpful. Thanks so much for your help with this survey!

Kevin McHugh

NursBarbie · Nov 20, 2002

Thanks everyone for your responses! They will be very helpful. I'll still be accumulating responses for the next several days so please feel free to post. Thanks again - I really appreciate your taking the time to respond.

Barbie

mageean · Nov 20, 2002

1. 50

2 male

3 Married

4. 3

5. Kent. Southern England

6. White Irish!

7.RMN.RGN

8. Completed nursing Training in 1977

9. Mental Health in Older people.

10.Service manager for the above over 4 hospital sites and 5 community nursing teams. Area of 800 square miles.

11.25

12. Not enough!. £35K sterling

13. Involvement with people and practicalities.

14. As a good nurse you may find yourself,like me, being dragged into management.

15. better ward/unit environments

higher salary and staff numbers

16. heavy reliance on agency staff who pay more than nhs

17 Finish my career in management.

18 Yes, particularly mental health

19 Yes, despite the problems!

20 As 15. Create educational opportunities to allow care assistants , who do not have formal academic qualifications, to achieve registration.