This woman would like us to think she is on our side

Nurses Activism

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What do you mean? I liked most of her points, except the part about staffing levels and mandatory overtime. The rest seemed pretty good. What was your beef?

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I also thought that the column was well written and I agreed with most of what was said.

What part in specific was a problem for you?

I really liked the part about paying the "senior" nurses at higher levels to retain them in nursing. $80,000 per year for straight time sounds great to me. Compared with what a new RN starts at (18.75 here), that would be an appropriate amount for a 20 yr RN. I'm not there yet but I hope when I reach 20 years that my experience is worth paying for.

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Hi oramar. Er um, let me guess. Problem with entry level nursing written as ADN, Diploma? Survey taken mostly from unionized nurses? ANA as only recognized spokesgroup for nurses? Am I getting close? :)

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That statement sent up the red flag for me. Anybody who thinks staffing levels and mandatory ot do not have to immediately be corrected & is not part of the root cause of the problem and is not what is making the profession unattractive does not understand or hear a word of what nurses are saying. We all know of places of employment where people say " you cant pay me enough to work in that hell-hole" or "I wouldnt work there if they paid me a million dollars", so any place with horrendous working conditions or abusive management practices like those can offer its nurses $80,000/yr or more & still wont find enough nurses to work for them until those conditions are repaired. At this point, legislation forcing the employers to make those repairs or be in violation of the law is the only way its going to happen because the employers sure arent taking the lead & doing it on their own.

The article mentions the 126,000 vacant RN positions nation-wide but doesnt mention the 500,000 nurses nation-wide who are currently licensed but not working in direct care or even in nursing at the moment. We have almost 5 times as many nurses available right now for those vacant positions but it's the working conditions more than pay that they give as the reason they arent taking these jobs.

Its hard to see how anyone can be respecting us as they hold us hostage at the end of our shift. They can pay me $100,000/yr but if I have to sacrifice my life, health, & possibly my license for it - its just not worth it. I am very wary of anyone who ignores this & just says that improving staffing levels & banning mandatory ot is "misguided" or that all we want is more pay & respect.

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I had a problem with "nursing" being viewed as an unattractive field. I don't view "nursing" that way. I don't work with anyone who views it that way. And I don't think a few newspaper columns will make "nursing" any more attractive. I like her call for higher pay also. But as a professional who wants to do a professional job, I see mandated staffing limits as one way to curb the high patient counts for nurses heaped on us by greedy administrators. Gary

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I thinkthat like many people who are not nurses, SHE is misguided, although I think she means well and has some very good points. I get the impression that she feels if nursing became a more attractive & respected profession-both in the financial as well as professional sense-that this would attract more people to the profesion and alleviate the nursing shortage, thereby eliminating the need for staffing guidelines and prohibitions on mandatory OT.

What she doesn't understand is that it is staffing shortages and mandatory OT due to corporate greed that is a root CAUSE of the nursing shortage-it is not that the shortage of nurses led to these problems, but rather greed on the part of health care facilities. The less money spent, the more in the corporate coffers-and short staffing & mandatory OT are big money savers for facilities. THAT is why we must first legally FORCE the facilities to stop these practices. Nurses tried to send a message by leaving hospitals in droves, further worsening a shortage that also has other root causes (as pointed out in the article). This didn't work-but in fact gave the hospitals an EXCUSE for these poor staffing practices. They can can point to the "shortage" as the CAUSE of short staffing and mandatory OT-"We just can hire enough nurses"-when in fact, many nurses would like to return if only theses 2 policies were eliminated.

If nursing became a more respected profession, these policies would cease to exist, because as professionals, our opinions would matter. People would listen when we say we are too tired to offer quality, safe care, or stretched too thin to do the same. WE need to control our professional practice, not the bean counters who only know how to work with numbers-where there are NO variables-instead of people-where there are INFINITE differences!

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Originally posted by -jt

I don't think she was saying that these areas should not be addressed, just that without fixing the problems in nursing that led to these things (short staffing and mandatory OT) we may be able to change laws but we won't have the nurses to actually do them.

As for the "unattractive" remark, a job with poor wage progression, mandatory OT, poor staffing ratios and inner bickering over the ADN BSN issue would look unatttractive to someone trying to decide on a career path.

I love my job and can't imagine doing anything else, but there are definitely draw backs. I think we have to realistic about it.

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I agreed with the part about nursing being an unattractive field, and this is why.

Every time someone asks me "What are you going to school for?" and i tell them nursing I get comments such as:

Why do you want to do THAT?!?!?!

Are you sure that is a good idea?

Why not go into something better, like accounting?

Do you want to wipe-butts for the rest of your life?

and so on and so forth.

That tells me that nursing is not seen as a good career choice by the public.

Plus, I feel like this is one of the few careers where over half of the people that are already in the field discourage anyone else fro getting into it!!!

Just my two cents.

Traci

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Actually we already DO have the nurses. An important Congressional Research report last May found that there are 500,000 of them nation-wide who are licensed but not working in nursing & most have said its first because of the working conditions, as well as inadequate pay & benefits. Thats almost 20% of all the available nurses in this country & they are will not work in hospitals or in nursing. Since there are only 126,000 vacant positons, we already have more than enough numbers of current nurses, even if just a fraction of them came back to work. But they wont do that until the working conditions along with the salary & benefits are improved. The numbers of nurses ARE out there right now but increasing pay alone is not going to bring them back to the bedside.

Exactly - and the major 2 of those problems CAN be resolved by legislation. Legislation to correct staffing levels & prohibit mandatory ot as a staffing tool is not only not misguided but is desparately needed.

Too bad that article didnt have a "reply" button. The comments in this thread are all impressive.

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Anyone good on the computor? I though the article included an e-mail address for responses, but I have no idea how to attach/send/forward etc.

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Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.

Mail can be sent to: [email protected]

or you can go the the article above, look for the box on the top right side of the articcle and click directly on the light blue words: [email protected] .

That will open up an email letter form taht you can type and sen your response.

Good Luck.

Karen

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