Future of Nursing

What would you like to see happen in the role of hospital RNs in the future?

I'll bite and throw out this idea I've had for years.

I would like to see nurses not be employees of hospitals or health care organizations, but all nurses would work directly for nurse-run cooperatives or corporations, sort of like a combination of medieval guilds and labor unions. Each nurse would have ownership in the guild and directly elect those running it. Each would have a chance to serve as officer or administrator. Each guild would contract with each health care organization for nursing services. This way nurses would directly control the contracts, benefits, pay, &c. Nurses would not be employees of hospitals but the guild would bill for professional nursing services rendered, much like CNMs, MDs, and other allied health professionals bill for their services to third party payors, health care institutions, &c.

That is actually a very interesting idea.

I'll bite and throw out this idea I've had for years.

I would like to see nurses not be employees of hospitals or health care organizations, but all nurses would work directly for nurse-run cooperatives or corporations, sort of like a combination of medieval guilds and labor unions. Each nurse would have ownership in the guild and directly elect those running it. Each would have a chance to serve as officer or administrator. Each guild would contract with each health care organization for nursing services. This way nurses would directly control the contracts, benefits, pay, &c. Nurses would not be employees of hospitals but the guild would bill for professional nursing services rendered, much like CNMs, MDs, and other allied health professionals bill for their services to third party payors, health care institutions, &c.

:yeahthat:

This could be done ya know....break it down into areas of training/cross training and specialty of practice there could be a guild over each of these. Then this could be further broken down to regions/districts where nurses would be the most familiar with P&P of different areas. We would be enough of a collective to offer our own insurance and retirement. There is a lot to this...but it could be done. By definition, isn't a guild non-profit as well?

:yeahthat:

This could be done ya know....break it down into areas of training/cross training and specialty of practice there could be a guild over each of these. Then this could be further broken down to regions/districts where nurses would be the most familiar with P&P of different areas. We would be enough of a collective to offer our own insurance and retirement. There is a lot to this...but it could be done. By definition, isn't a guild non-profit as well?

Not sure, as I'm not sure of the exact legal definitions of non-profit vs profit; I don't know enough about this specifically. Are medical groups which bill for services considered profit vs nonprofit? I think the distinction has to do with how the profits are used. Nonprofit institutions technically put their profits into research and other areas instead of distributing them to stockholders, which a for-profit corp. does. The guild members, the nurses, would share in the profits, not the hospital, and would own their labor. Nurses would own their labor through the guild and would own the value of their labor, surplus value would not accrue to the hospital but would be redistributed to the nurses. Sort of like bonuses paid to stockholders in a corporation, but I want a more direct, worker-owned entity, hence "guild", not "corporation" -- I want it to be less likely to devolve into another corporate employer not different from working for a hospital. See wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Theory_Of_Value#Marx.27s_theory

I have to think this through and review some basic economics ... I think it's an interesting fantasy.

What ideas did the OP have about the future of nursing?