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You know, when all these Baby Boomer aged health care professionals finally retire, do you believe the next generations will be enough, to 'care' for the Baby Boomers, such a huge generation of people?
Also, do you think that the percentages of young students going into and sticking with nursing is as high as in earlier days?
There are so many other ways to make money, and with all of the cut backs and the unforgiving nature of nursing, do you forsee a big problem with getting adequate numbers of nurses to staff facilities?
"The baby boomers will have plenty of caretakers. Healthcare has a reputation of being a place where the jobs are."
Unfortunately, the new nurses really don't want to do "real nursing".... they think nursing is documenting and passing pills, no joke, that's what my daughter (in nursing as a 2nd career) said to me ! And of course, working with a bunch of 20-somethings today verifies that reality.
"The baby boomers will have plenty of caretakers. Healthcare has a reputation of being a place where the jobs are."Unfortunately, the new nurses really don't want to do "real nursing".... they think nursing is documenting and passing pills, no joke, that's what my daughter (in nursing as a 2nd career) said to me ! And of course, working with a bunch of 20-somethings today verifies that reality.
So true. There is a poster who blatantly said she didn't want to work bedside at all (even though she hasn't passed the NCLEX).
That makes me lose hope in the future of nursing.
This is what I like to call 'an onion problem'. You can fix one layer of problem but then another presents itself underneath. Perhaps others will disagree with me but in my eyes, the root cause to all of this is the American cultural phenomenon of selfishness and greed. I want to preface this rant by saying I will probably make generalizations, not everyone is a culprit to the problem. We have the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers getting older and sicker. However, most are not prepared for death. Most do not have advanced directives and in the end, it probably doesn't matter because in some states, the family can override your advanced directive as soon as you can no longer make decisions for yourself. We are doing open heart surgery on 92 year olds, we have to allow the family to decide to trach grandma who has been demented and barely responsive for the last 15 years. The American expectation of death is that it is some battle which we must fight tooth and nail, consuming so many resources and ensuring that younger generations will be more sickly and not live as long.
Take a look at your health insurance plan, take a look at your finances. When my parents (who are boomers) were children, healthcare wasn't really a concern. It was something everyone could afford because it was less expensive and people had more disposable income because jobs paid well and housing costs weren't outrageous. Now, my insurance premiums for just myself are $200/pay period and I have a $6500 deductible. That's pretty commonplace these days. I'm lucky that I have a good salary so I can afford it. But my best friend is a millennial who owns a small business and works part time at a law firm so she doesn't qualify for insurance. The penalty for not having insurance is lower than what her monthly premiums would be so she is not insured. You're dead wrong if you think the Boomers had nothing to do with this corporate greed that has put us in a downward spiral both in terms of economics and healthcare. Boomers are the wealthiest generation in history and they destroyed everything in their path to get it, including their children's futures.
The other problem is billing and distribution of healthcare providers. In the US, the highest reimbursement rate is for procedures. So of course, docs with med school loans want to be orthopods or plastic surgeons. No one wants to be a family practitioner and that has led to a shortage. Family docs are overworked and underpaid thus decreasing the quality of care.
And on the front of bedside nursing, I am not ashamed to admit I selfishly became a NP because I felt that I would not sacrifice my life for my patients. When I first started as a nurse, I was so proud. I worked in a busy ER and felt that I was really helping people. Well staff got laid off and shifted around, we started taking more and more patients. One night I was charge and we had a staffing crisis. I called my manager to see if he could call in help or come in. He told me "you figure it out" and I said "it's unsafe, what if something happens?" to which he responded "well that's what the hospital has Liability Insurance for". It became increasingly clear my license was at stake so I moved to a new hospital in their ICU.
Within a few years, we no longer had secretaries, we had only one tech for the whole unit. I was the youngest nurse so I had to help turn every single patient because the older nurses were not strong enough. I have chronic back pain and I am 31 years old. I am very thankful I can control it with exercise, stretching, and massage. I was bitten and hit, called a murderer by patient's family members. I had to keep people alive, torturing them, so their families could still draw their social security checks. That stuff wears on you mentally and physically. Administration simply does not care, you are just a warm body to them. So until some of these attitudes and policies change, healthcare will get worse and worse until we are like China. You will have to bribe staff with money to get adequate care.
I can totally agree with you on Americans' cultural views regarding death and dying issues. To put it bluntly, we dwell in a death-defying, death-denying society. I have written about this issue in the past if anyone has time to burn.The American expectation of death is that it is some battle which we must fight tooth and nail
https://allnurses.com/nursing-activism-healthcare/our-death-defying-773839.html
https://allnurses.com/nurse-colleague-patient/our-death-denying-897974.html
You're dead wrong if you think the Boomers had nothing to do with this corporate greed that has put us in a downward spiral both in terms of economics and healthcare. Boomers are the wealthiest generation in history and they destroyed everything in their path to get it, including their children's futures.
This is an unfair oversimplification!!! I assure you that many boomers had absolutely nothing to do with this. While I agree that greed has played a part in the downward spiral of healthcare (not just boomers though) there are many more moving parts to consider (government regulations, welfare programs, and yes I agree to some point no end of life education). I for one, pay way way more than you do for my healthcare and I am not a "wealthy". I believe that it is the government that is responsible for that fact that we are leaving our children and grandchildren with a less secure future (not individuals) our government has racked up quite a debt that individuals have no control over, way too much government spending/waste.
People go into nursing because it remains an alluring career pathway for those of us who come from backgrounds that entailed poorly-paid unskilled or semiskilled labor.With ALL of the cutbacks & nurses in the system accepting this as the new normal, why would anyone go into nursing.
I've worked at McDonald's, Target, the 99 Cent Store, group homes, grocery stores, a paper products factory, and other workplaces where backbreaking labor and low pay came with the territory.
Believe me when I say that nursing is positioned multiple rungs up the economic ladder when compared to the industries of fast food, manufacturing, and retail.
I'm a Boomer. In my mothers time, she literally was not told she had cancer by agreement between the MD and my father. Having seen that first hand, there was no way I was going to allow a paternal approach to my care. We as a generation rose up and took control of health information, especially for women. So sure we're bossy and independent. Better than the alternative.
I'm a boomer born in 1954. No smoking or drinking and no drugs. Ran marathons until I was 59 despite being diagnosed with MS. Then everything changed. I had a relapse of MS that wouldn't quit. Treatment suppressed my immune system and I got C-diff. 7 weeks off work on FMLA. I expected to work to age 70 but ended up retiring at 62 because of falls and eyesight issues from the MS. Suddenly I felt my age. No one knows what the future holds, but I do believe that many boomers will live sicker for longer. Some due to lifestyle issues and some from chronic illness like mine. I just retired this past October and I was blessed to have a retirement check from the health care system I worked for 19 years as well as social security to live on. I also had saved into a retirement fund. Those who have little to no savings and chronic illness are going to end up with extreme financial difficulties and in nursing homes and yes, I do think it will be difficult for many to get good care.
20% of all new nurses leave the nursing profession forever in the first year of nursing. That is a scary statistic because we know what they suffered through to get that RN licence. This is my second degree and I came into nursing for the reason I wanted to care for people. I actually love caring for patients but am ready to leave bedside nursing because nobody advocates or cares for the nurses. I have never heard of a profession that calls people off without pay just because work is slow. I have never heard of a profession that makes people earn their vacation pay and time off (my husband got 3 weeks Paid vacation a year and several days paid sick leave)...There is no way I can earn that many CTOs in a year even if I wasn't having to use them on days when the hospital staffed us poorly and called me off. On the flip side, I am also expected to carry extra patients when they understaff the floor, am expected to do mandatory training modules on my own time, and huddle starts 5 minutes before I get start getting paid (meaning I work the equivalent of one shift for free a year). And when I am done with a shift, I often can't physically move anymore.
If I had to do it over again, I would have picked a different major.
There isn't a shortage of nurses. Just a shortage of nurses willing to be nurses and do nursing.
I was also a career change RN; I left a career with a tight residency requirement that was going to make marriage very difficult. I dreamed of portability and a licensed skill set. I had no idea I was walking into a time clock punching blue collar world of forced double shifts, mandatory staff meetings at 1400 (when working 23-0700), unpaid early/late/work through lunch time. Don't get me started on floating to areas I had no experience or skills in. Or the phone ringing all day, every day on my day off.
30 years into nursing I found they I needed to look for jobs that met my needs for control of my time. I've done ok but those early years were treacherous.
Feelgood RN
92 Posts
I don't deny that there are a disproportionate amount of elderly in assisted living or LTC that are being fully taken care by our tax money. And as is expected of indigent population they are going to rely on what they've always relied on, the government.
The purpose of my post was to show that just because they have full care on vacations liners it isn't just because "they want to live like in their thirties" but because it has become a viable option.
ALL of your indigent LTC/assisted living people may be on medicare/caid, but not all people in LTC/Assisted living are indigent. I worked in an assisted living facility that would only allow 25% medicare/Medicaid resident population. Some of the residents had literally been living on cruise ships for a few years prior and were taking a "vacation" from the vacation. They told me they do this so that grandchildren/kids could visit and they would go back out after a year or two because the cruises were cheaper.
I don't know where you live, but many of the boomers I worked with would rather NOT be sitting in a room "popping...pain pills" but would have rather been down at Walmart greeting people at the door. Society just doesn't have the time, patience, or will to find a place for the elderly to assist in the everyday.