Everyone seems to be turning to nursing. I remember way back when (5 years ago) when nursing was a calling. There were still other jobs a person could do and make a living--like heating and air conditioning. Now nursing is a lifeboat--a recesion-proof job that anyone and everyone is considering.
I see post after post in here of people who have no experience, no particular desire, and no particular aptitude for nursing inquiring about nursing as a job. They need something to pay the bills. I just went to a restaurant tonight, and two of our waiters are starting nursing school.
Let's face it, with the coming depression, nursing wages are attractive. So here's a prediction, please tell me if you agree or disagree:
Nursing boards will start requiring a 4-year degree to sit for the NCLEX.
The Nursing shortage is going to end in about 3 years; in five there will be a glut of nurses and getting a job will be about like getting a job as an NP is now.
Travel agencies will cease to exist and agency nursing will go the way of the way of the dinosaur.
Without unions, hospitals will force nurses to take about 14 patients a shift and will simply fire those who won't do it.
Nursing may suffer a set-back in terms of pay, but then economically, everything will suffer a set-back, including prices. I agree with Flightline--hospitals, especially those in urban areas, pretty much continue to compete for nurses, especially experienced ones. One of their worst fears is closing units (and losing revenue) because of lack of staff, and if the patient load becomes too much, quality will suffer which impacts CMS payments. The bottom line is, unlike the depression of the 1920s, we are faced with several distinct differences:
1. The population is much older and their medical needs are much greater, especially with the technology of the past 20 years that helps keep them alive.
2. In the 1920s, there was nothing close to socialized medicine. While we don't have it now we have CMS and we may it in the future. This makes health care attainable for everyone. Even if unemployment reaches 20%, people will still seek health care--just more of them will have their bill paid by the government. Okay, your taxes go up, but at least you are employed to pay taxes.
3. Healthcare quality indices directly impact the payment structure now. Hospitals can afford only a certain level of patient load before their quality, and payment levels, suffer. In other words, nurse numbers directly affect revenue.
I think all of you are in a good position to ride out any depression-like economic crisis by virtue of the fact that you have jobs that will be in demand no matter how bad the economy gets. People get sick, they get hurt and they need medical care, even if the government has to pay for it. Certainly, hospitals are going to weather a harsh storm, and some may even close their doors. Elective surgeries will drop and OP visits will be used in favor of IP visits. But the hospitals will still have the elderly and the sick and the injured and they will still need nurses because the lack of them is not only unfathomable, it also is economically disasterous.
The bottom line is, unlike the depression of the 1920s, we are faced with several distinct differences:
I think all of you are in a good position to ride out any depression-like economic crisis by virtue of the fact that you have jobs that will be in demand no matter how bad the economy gets. People get sick, they get hurt and they need medical care, even if the government has to pay for it. Certainly, hospitals are going to weather a harsh storm, and some may even close their doors. Elective surgeries will drop and OP visits will be used in favor of IP visits. But the hospitals will still have the elderly and the sick and the injured and they will still need nurses because the lack of them is not only unfathomable, it also is economically disasterous.
I agree with you on both points: this downturn will not be like the 1920s. This thing is going to be its own thing. Don't forget that it was WW2 that ended the Great Depression. There's no telling what would have happened without it. Not only did the war create rationing (thus savings), massive government spending, and the death of a lot of potential job-seekers, it also ended with a huge technology boost: cars, planes, rockets, and the cold war.
Today we won't fight a world war--not without disasterous consequences. And there is no technology boom that's going to pull us out. And we are all in debt up to our eyebrows--and our greedy glutonous selves were who the rest of the world sold to. Now what?
I remember when I saw this coming. It was in mid-2006. I was on a travel contract in Tucson. On one of my days off, my wife and I were jogging along the river walk there, and I was looking across it to a housing development that was being built. And I knew they were 250,000 at least. And they were average houses. I knew right then and there that there was no way housing prices could keep going up. No one has a quarter of a million bucks to spend on an average house. It's funny, all I thought was that construction workers would be out of a job as a result.
I think the kind of recession or depression that is coming down the pike is going to be what the 1930's one would have been like without WW2.
I actually am looking forward to seeing how 2009 plays out. I'd love to come in here and say I was totally off base and wrong. I'd love to see this all blow over as just a little glitch on the endless rise upward in our economy. But I can't see it.
If I had to make a prediction, I'd guess about a decade of slow to moderate decline and then a kind of leveling out where there isn't really any boom or bust, a lot of socialism 30% tax withou a return. And people learning to live with a lot less. I lived in England for 8 years. The houses and cars are really small.
I agree with you on both points: this downturn will not be like the 1920s. This thing is going to be its own thing. Don't forget that it was WW2 that ended the Great Depression. There's no telling what would have happened without it. Not only did the war create rationing (thus savings), massive government spending, and the death of a lot of potential job-seekers, it also ended with a huge technology boost: cars, planes, rockets, and the cold war.
Today we won't fight a world war--not without disasterous consequences. And there is no technology boom that's going to pull us out. And we are all in debt up to our eyebrows--and our greedy glutonous selves were who the rest of the world sold to. Now what?
I remember when I saw this coming. It was in mid-2006. I was on a travel contract in Tucson. On one of my days off, my wife and I were jogging along the river walk there, and I was looking across it to a housing development that was being built. And I knew they were 250,000 at least. And they were average houses. I knew right then and there that there was no way housing prices could keep going up. No one has a quarter of a million bucks to spend on an average house. It's funny, all I thought was that construction workers would be out of a job as a result.
I think the kind of recession or depression that is coming down the pike is going to be what the 1930's one would have been like without WW2.
I actually am looking forward to seeing how 2009 plays out. I'd love to come in here and say I was totally off base and wrong. I'd love to see this all blow over as just a little glitch on the endless rise upward in our economy. But I can't see it.
If I had to make a prediction, I'd guess about a decade of slow to moderate decline and then a kind of leveling out where there isn't really any boom or bust, a lot of socialism 30% tax withou a return. And people learning to live with a lot less. I lived in England for 8 years. The houses and cars are really small.
They will call it the global economy. Europe is feeling the effects of this. There are whole towns in Italy that have been abandoned.
We're (Americans) all so fat and happy over here, we were riding the gravy train so long, now the party is over. As for my house payment, it isn't an extravagant house, just a plain house, but I sure won't make the mortgage payment working at Pizza Hut. Thank God I don't have the car loans and credit card debt so many are struggling with. I wonder what will become of us nurses? As for there always being old people to take care of, the government says it can't take care of many more. The government claims it is about to buckle from entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid (though it isn't buckling from war funding, oh no sir.) I'll tell you what's coming, they're going to open clinics so you can just load grandma up in the car and take her down to "the clinic" and have her put down like a sick animal. Come to think of it, that may be a better way to go than living on and on in a bed and all contractured up...anyway...we're all going down the drain.
I have to agree with Flightline. There was an analyst on some business news program (Meredith Whitley or Whitney?) that said she would not be surprised if unemployment hit 40-50%! People DO NOT make statements like that simply to shock people. I'm just finishing up LVN school in the next few weeks and praying I'm able to get a job somewhere, anywhere in the country!
I also partially agree with Flightline. I don't know if I saw the same news report that you did, but I did see an economic analyst discussing the current economic conditions in our country. He said that the economic patterns that we are seeing now are very similar to what happened before the stock market crash of 1929. While this certainly does not mean the stock market is going to crash again, it is enough to make me sit up, take notice, and continue to prepare for the "what if".
Honestly, I have seen a major economic downturn coming for several years, and, thankfully, I have been preparing for this possibility. I think the best we can do is try to prepare for it as best we can while hoping it doesn't happen!
At least a third of the Tennessee Technology Centers are located in whistle stop towns (Livingston and McMinnville, for example.) Probably more.
They're churning (yes! churning!) out two classes a year, and the last I heard there were a lot more students getting through than back when I graduated in 2000.
I could get on a soap box about the characters I've seen come out of these schools (but I don't feel like getting into it right now.)
What else would they do? Jobs are scarce. I don't blame them. At the same time we just have to face what this means: a surplus.
GoLytely, I live just down the road (so to speak) from TTC-Livingston. You are so right that students are getting into the program who would not have gotten in ten years ago. I graduated from that program back in the 1980's, and back then, it was hard to get in, and the program was tough! It seems that nursing programs overall have become easier to get through. Unfortunately, I fear this is the general trend in nursing education, and I don't believe this trend is good for any of us, most especially the student's who are getting shortchanged in these programs. I recently heard that the pass rate for NCLEX-RN is about 85%. Does that mean that 15% of the students are not being adequately prepared to enter the profession? That is a pretty high precentage of students not being prepared, and that is very scary to me.
Depressed reading it? Try writing it! But seriously, I disagree that there will be any cut in nurses pay. It's very hard to do that and try to keep a hospital open since it may cause nurses that you need to leave. And I think professional health care is one of the best industries to be in in this economy. What seems more likely is that given the pay and the security, more people will become nurses and the nursing shortage will dry up fairly quickly making it hard to find employment if you're new, and hard to get another job if you quit the one you are in.
The students in here, in my opinion, should try to get jobs as techs or CNAs at the hospitals they want to work at when they get their licenses, even if they only do it on a very minimal PRN basis. Techs and CNAs will always be looked at for nursing positions before strangers--they're a known quantity.
Flightline, I hope and pray that it does not happen again, but back in the early and mid-1990's, in the area where I live, there were pay cuts for nurses. And those nurses basically had to just sucked it up, because there were no other jobs without incurring a 80+ mile commute. Back then, I think it really depended on were one lived. This is a rural area with few employers, so people really felt that they had no options. I hope I never see those conditions again!
Flightline and GoLytely, I agree 100% with you. I wasn't alive in the 1930's, so I don't truly know what it was like back then. But regardless of whether we call it an economic downturn, a recession, or a depression, I believe this situation is going to be very bad. Worse than anything most of us has ever seen.
I agree with you on both points: this downturn will not be like the 1920s. This thing is going to be its own thing. Don't forget that it was WW2 that ended the Great Depression. There's no telling what would have happened without it. Not only did the war create rationing (thus savings), massive government spending, and the death of a lot of potential job-seekers, it also ended with a huge technology boost: cars, planes, rockets, and the cold war.
Today we won't fight a world war--not without disasterous consequences. And there is no technology boom that's going to pull us out. And we are all in debt up to our eyebrows--and our greedy glutonous selves were who the rest of the world sold to. Now what?
I remember when I saw this coming. It was in mid-2006. I was on a travel contract in Tucson. On one of my days off, my wife and I were jogging along the river walk there, and I was looking across it to a housing development that was being built. And I knew they were 250,000 at least. And they were average houses. I knew right then and there that there was no way housing prices could keep going up. No one has a quarter of a million bucks to spend on an average house. It's funny, all I thought was that construction workers would be out of a job as a result.
I think the kind of recession or depression that is coming down the pike is going to be what the 1930's one would have been like without WW2.
I actually am looking forward to seeing how 2009 plays out. I'd love to come in here and say I was totally off base and wrong. I'd love to see this all blow over as just a little glitch on the endless rise upward in our economy. But I can't see it.
If I had to make a prediction, I'd guess about a decade of slow to moderate decline and then a kind of leveling out where there isn't really any boom or bust, a lot of socialism 30% tax withou a return. And people learning to live with a lot less. I lived in England for 8 years. The houses and cars are really small.
Flightline, one question I'd like to know from someone who's been there is, what was healthcare like in England? You mentioned a socialist 30% tax without a return, which is exactly where I'm afraid we're headed. I recently took some ADN to BSN classes and was amazed at the endorsement of socialized (sorry, nationalized) healthcare. The claim was that government administrative costs were 3% - far less than the private sector - and how countries with national healthcare plans like England and Canada are superior to us.
As a former executive in state government, I know those figures, however they were calculated and reported, do not tell the true story. The waste and lack of accountability in our government is criminal. It has not only bankrupted Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but now the banks that were forced to lend money to people who could never make payments. And we're to think the government can manage the finance, auto, and healthcare industries? The Hawaiin government recently abandoned its statewide health plan because people who could afford to pay for coverage chose not to if they could get it for "free." Of course, the plan went bankrupt.
I know a lot of people blame the war and its cost for the economic crisis, but few people realize that the US represents about 5% of the worldwide population yet provides more than 90% of humanitarian aid and security to the world. The "cost" of not fighting and winning this war is a complete global economy of poverty.
Okay, sorry for the rant. What WAS healthcare in England like?
That is just a poetic way to say that the monetary compensation is not sufficient for the job of nursing.
This economic downturn is like the one in the 90's. Clinton announced that no new government contracts will be given. Venture capitalist stopped funding any start-up with a good presentation and a claim to the inside track to government contracts. Shortly followed by the S&L scandal caused by being too generous with home loans.
Then things got better because venture capitalists believed that hits and page views would have conversion percentages similar to direct mail. When they found out this was not true: we had the dotcom crash. Shortly followed by the current mortgage scandal.
The new technology for venture capitalist to invest in is biotechnology. It's complex enough that a start-up company only needs a good presentation and a claim to have the inside track.
I agree with Flightline--hospitals, especially those in urban areas, pretty much continue to compete for nurses, especially experienced ones.
I linked to this thread because I recently attended some job fairs in a major Texas metropolitan area and, like many have said, thought I could get a job anywhere, anytime as a nurse. I was surprised to find that wasn't the case. When I inquired about programs for experienced nurses returning to the bedside (I've been in an executive nursing position for some time) the hospital recruiters said there were internships for new graduates, but they were not available to experienced nurses.
I found it ironic that the lead story and CE article in the December 2008 Texas Nurses Association's "Texas Nursing Voice" was about the nursing shortage.
I'll tell you what's coming, they're going to open clinics so you can just load grandma up in the car and take her down to "the clinic" and have her put down like a sick animal. Come to think of it, that may be a better way to go than living on and on in a bed and all contractured up...anyway...we're all going down the drain.
I think the medical community, especially nurses, should oppose active voluntary and involuntary euthanasia at all turns--otherwise there won't be any need for nurses anymore. How many nursing homes for dogs to do you see?
Flightline, one question I'd like to know from someone who's been there is, what was healthcare like in England? You mentioned a socialist 30% tax without a return, which is exactly where I'm afraid we're headed. I recently took some ADN to BSN classes and was amazed at the endorsement of socialized (sorry, nationalized) healthcare. The claim was that government administrative costs were 3% - far less than the private sector - and how countries with national healthcare plans like England and Canada are superior to us.
In my opinion, the National Health Service is superior to the U.S. system in that it is free to the patient. I found health care to be easily accessible and now that I'm a nurse and think back, I think it was better. I don't want to get into my past personal life, but I remember appointments with the doctor were very easy to get. ER visits had no particular wait time that's any different than here, and any surgery that is needed is done just as fast as it is here. People don't wait "years" for a surgery they need to have. But the people pay a poll tax, TV tax, road tax, and income tax at about 30% with no return. They also pay a national VAT on purchased goods that's 15% Nonetheless, with all that said, an RN over there lives a standard of living that is almost identical to what an RN lives here in the U.S. In fact, the standard of living is very similar, except, like I said, the houses and cars are smaller.
As a former executive in state government, I know those figures, however they were calculated and reported, do not tell the true story. The waste and lack of accountability in our government is criminal. It has not only bankrupted Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but now the banks that were forced to lend money to people who could never make payments. And we're to think the government can manage the finance, auto, and healthcare industries? The Hawaiin government recently abandoned its statewide health plan because people who could afford to pay for coverage chose not to if they could get it for "free." Of course, the plan went bankrupt.
If you're going to have social services, we Americans are going to have to get used to the idea of a lot higher taxes. I think last year I calculated I actually paid about 10-11% income tax. That would rise to 30%.
I know a lot of people blame the war and its cost for the economic crisis, but few people realize that the US represents about 5% of the worldwide population yet provides more than 90% of humanitarian aid and security to the world. The "cost" of not fighting and winning this war is a complete global economy of poverty.
I agree. Even though the war was initially a criminal act in my opinion, now we have an obligation to remain there and turn it into a stable and functioning society. We owe the Iraqis reparations it seems.
Okay, sorry for the rant. What WAS healthcare in England like?
In my opinion, it was fine. And I'll tell you this: the most conservative, stock broker, Margaret Thatcher-loving Brit would never give it up. It's part of their social contract.
And I think America has a contract with its citizens as well. In exchange for my citizenship, loyalty, my taxes, my obedience to the laws, my industry and my consumerism, my willingness to be drafted into military service, I should never have to worry about food, shelter, schools, or healthcare for me or my family. So many people have this idea that we should be good citizens to the government and never ask what our country can do for us by only what we can do for our country--hogwash. Society exists by social contract.
But seriously, I disagree that there will be any cut in nurses pay. It's very hard to do that and try to keep a hospital open since it may cause nurses that you need to leave. And I think professional health care is one of the best industries to be in in this economy. What seems more likely is that given the pay and the security, more people will become nurses and the nursing shortage will dry up fairly quickly making it hard to find employment if you're new, and hard to get another job if you quit the one you are in.
CrusadersFan
21 Posts
Nursing may suffer a set-back in terms of pay, but then economically, everything will suffer a set-back, including prices. I agree with Flightline--hospitals, especially those in urban areas, pretty much continue to compete for nurses, especially experienced ones. One of their worst fears is closing units (and losing revenue) because of lack of staff, and if the patient load becomes too much, quality will suffer which impacts CMS payments. The bottom line is, unlike the depression of the 1920s, we are faced with several distinct differences:
1. The population is much older and their medical needs are much greater, especially with the technology of the past 20 years that helps keep them alive.
2. In the 1920s, there was nothing close to socialized medicine. While we don't have it now we have CMS and we may it in the future. This makes health care attainable for everyone. Even if unemployment reaches 20%, people will still seek health care--just more of them will have their bill paid by the government. Okay, your taxes go up, but at least you are employed to pay taxes.
3. Healthcare quality indices directly impact the payment structure now. Hospitals can afford only a certain level of patient load before their quality, and payment levels, suffer. In other words, nurse numbers directly affect revenue.
I think all of you are in a good position to ride out any depression-like economic crisis by virtue of the fact that you have jobs that will be in demand no matter how bad the economy gets. People get sick, they get hurt and they need medical care, even if the government has to pay for it. Certainly, hospitals are going to weather a harsh storm, and some may even close their doors. Elective surgeries will drop and OP visits will be used in favor of IP visits. But the hospitals will still have the elderly and the sick and the injured and they will still need nurses because the lack of them is not only unfathomable, it also is economically disasterous.