Hospital Profits Over Patient Safety: The reasons you should not be a nurse

[KalipsoRed21, BSN, RN]

I saw this and it just spoke to me in a thousand ways. I want hospitals to be profitable enough to be stable, and to expand services, but the goals for profit are FAR beyond those meager goals. Your healthcare sucks because of capitalism. And the reason you shouldn’t be a nurse: capitalism = nurse abuse and poor patient outcomes. 

[Wuzzie]

I've been saying this for months. Covid didn't cause the problem it just exposed it.

[Guest 1152923]

     I've said this for a very long time also.  With the advent of corporate health care, hospitals are now patterned on the business model and the business model always serves the dollar first.  This is an extension of our capitalist system which values productivity and money over all else; morality, ethics, respect, integrity, honor...the environment.

[DavidFR, BSN, MSN, RN]

Health care is not a business. Good hospitals can never make a profit.

Yet another thread that makes me grateful I work in a socialised health system. Not perfect, of course we have our problems, but when the World Health Organisation used to publish league table for health outcomes, two socialised health systems repeatedly alternated first place, France and Sweden.

Hospitals are a public service, they're not here to make money. That ethos is deeply entrenched in most European countries. Here in France our strong unions ensure our pay and conditions never hit rock bottom. And if I feel unsafe on a shift I can sound the alarm bell without fearing repercussions. There is actually a system in place exactly for highlighting your concerns about safety or undesirable situations. I shudder when I read posts here about nurses scared to speak up.

I've visited  the USA four times. I love your wonderful country, but if one thing ever dissuaded me from going to work there (and I did in my youth pass the CGFNS with a view to doing so), it's your system that put me off.

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

I had a horrible weekend of being short staffed.  I'd like to think it's because so many nurses are out right now with Omicron and that is true, but really it's been this way the last 30 years I've been a nurse.  

A friend of mine applied to be an RN where I work and she said they never responded to her application.  How can a short staffed hospital not want to hire a good qualified applicant.  Makes you wonder.....

These people are telling my story.

[JBMmom, MSN, NP]

51 minutes ago, Tweety said:

How can a short staffed hospital not want to hire a good qualified applicant.  Makes you wonder.....

I've heard this SO many times recently. Nurses and aides that say they applied and never hear back, management says they're doing all they can to recruit talent but somehow this keeps happening. 

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

15 minutes ago, JBMmom said:

I've heard this SO many times recently. Nurses and aides that say they applied and never hear back, management says they're doing all they can to recruit talent but somehow this keeps happening. 

Being on the side that has a teeny bit of insight into the hiring process, all I can say is that the disconnect between HR and manager is shocking. Just this morning, the manager was saying how positions that are filled are still posted and all the open positions are still waiting to be posted. Offers can't go out because of the numbering system for each individual position- if it's not marked as open in the HR system, it can't be offered. The insanity is astounding.

[Wuzzie]

2 hours ago, DavidFR said:

I shudder when I read posts here about nurses scared to speak up.

Yeah, I posted this on my FB page but am nervous that I’m going to get blowback from it. 

[KalipsoRed21, BSN, RN]

7 hours ago, DavidFR said:

Health care is not a business. Good hospitals can never make a profit.

Yet another thread that makes me grateful I work in a socialised health system. Not perfect, of course we have our problems, but when the World Health Organisation used to publish league table for health outcomes, two socialised health systems repeatedly alternated first place, France and Sweden.

Hospitals are a public service, they're not here to make money. That ethos is deeply entrenched in most European countries. Here in France our strong unions ensure our pay and conditions never hit rock bottom. And if I feel unsafe on a shift I can sound the alarm bell without fearing repercussions. There is actually a system in place exactly for highlighting your concerns about safety or undesirable situations. I shudder when I read posts here about nurses scared to speak up.

I've visited  the USA four times. I love your wonderful country, but if one thing ever dissuaded me from going to work there (and I did in my youth pass the CGFNS with a view to doing so), it's your system that put me off.

I do wish we in the US saw healthcare as a public service and not a place to profit. Just like a good solid education, basic healthcare leads to a better country. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

4 hours ago, Wuzzie said:

Yeah, I posted this on my FB page but am nervous that I’m going to get blowback from it. 

I posted it on my facebook page too. I’m tired of being quite.

The American health system is not sustainable in its current form. It is fiscally irresponsible to continue in this direction.  The last attempt to pass legislation to switched us to a single payor system resulted in a compromise to a version of the Heritage Foundation's plan for healthcare in the USA. Republicans called that Obamacare and undermined it at every opportunity.  There were no ideas for making healthcare more accessible or affordable for most Americans to replace the ACA and during the time that social conservatives controlled congress and the white house the number of Americans with no, or poor access to health care increased.  

https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-population/

Quote

Following the ACA, the number of uninsured nonelderly Americans declined by 20 million, dropping to an historic low in 2016. However, beginning in 2017, the number of uninsured nonelderly Americans increased for three straight years, growing by 2.2 million from 26.7 million in 2016 to 28.9 million in 2019, and the uninsured rate increased from 10.0% in 2016 to 10.9% in 2019.

That trend largely reflects the political work of conservative legislators.  There are democrats  who don't embrace a Medicare for all type of solution, for sure, but the party platform reflects movement to a sustainable system. We are unlikely, as a nation, to escape this failing and cruel profit concerned health system as long as we continue to elevate politicians at the state and federal level who are not willing to address the need to transition away from this current system.  In my view, it's been near impossible to have any meaningful dialog with legislative conservatives about health care fixes for the last 20 years.  They are insincere in negotiations as it seems that their leading focus is NOT pursing a single payor system rather than making things better for We the People. 

I agree that hospitals and healthcare should not be a for profit enterprise. We've been going in the wrong direction since Nixon.  Our continued inability as a voting population to connect these dots and vote differently is sort of sad, IMV.  What does the media have people prioritizing instead of the thing so likely to send them into bankruptcy or the grave? 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2013/03/05/the-reason-american-health-care-is-out-of-control/

I'm old.  I started working in healthcare as a tech at age 17. My first nursing job was as a psych nurse in a regional state psychiatric hospital that was later defunded and closed during the Reagan administration. I've worked in a number of specialties and environments and states.  Over the years I have watched our health system get more expensive, more fractured, more dangerous and less effective.  Yet our political leadership seems to live in a delusion about healthcare in America and We the People continue to vote for them.  

At the same time that profits went up in the industry, working conditions for healthcare workers, especially nurses, deteriorated in many clinical settings.  Nurses are an expensive bit of the room and board charges. In too many facilities they have been chronically understaffed, overworked, micromanaged and treated as easily replaceable widgets. That's how you make bank for that new building project or executive bonus structure, right? 

The pandemic wiped the lipstick off this pig of a system.  Will we do anything about it?

trends-in-the-us-uninsured.pdf

[JBMmom, MSN, NP]

20 hours ago, Rose_Queen said:

Being on the side that has a teeny bit of insight into the hiring process, all I can say is that the disconnect between HR and manager is shocking.

I have heard that a few times. I had recommended that some CNAs apply and told the floor manager that they had filled out applications. She was shocked because she hadn't received notification. Once she contacted HR and specifically requesting their resumes, they came through. There wasn some sort of a screening process that they didn't "pass" based on the HR keywords, but they were viable candidates. And I do understand that cold resumes won't get through without a rec either. It's just too bad, one of the old times that an old paper resume system seems like it might have been more efficient in some cases. At least I could have just handed them directly to my manager and got the ball rolling. 

[JBMmom, MSN, NP]

20 hours ago, Wuzzie said:

Yeah, I posted this on my FB page but am nervous that I’m going to get blowback from it. 

I posted it on my facebook page and I was disappointed. I don't post very often and it's usually just pictures of my kids or something equally light. I've gotten 100+ "likes"/comments on fluff I've posted, but only 10 people "liked" the post and only three commented. Don't people understand that even if they're not a nurse, at some point they're likely to be a patient!! This has an effect on everyone. The presentation was very well done, I thought, I wish more people had taken the time to watch it. Oh well.