JUST SAY NO TO MNM

postaledde · Mar 28, 2001

Let's look at the math and the current way things are being done.A hospital or nursing home complains that they don't have enough money to give anyone a raise or hire more staff.However,they use agency nurses to fill the holes 40 hours a week.Ok, the agency charges the facility $50 an hour at a rate of $2,000 for the week. If I was to hire 2 nurses at $20 an hour for that same 40 hours I would only spend $1600. I have given you an extra staff member decreasing your work load which makes you want to stay.I have given you a fair wage and saved the facility $400. This can be repeated for every agency person that is used.This also holds true for LPN's and CNA's.There is always a savings for the the facility and a benefit to the staffing levels.

postaledde · Mar 28, 2001

ok, Buck so your ready to give up nursing.Your going to be replaced by a PCT (patient care technician) at less than half the rate and about 1/3 of the knowledge.You obviously work in a hospital setting and have the mentality of an ostrich.You have your head buried firmly in the sand.When you transfer patients out of the hospital to sub-acute rehab centers that have one nurse for 30 patients and 4 CNA's that your responsible for you would want a change.Why are all of these nursing homes around the country being sued.Substandard care!! Do you think the employee's at these facilties care any less. NO! they don't, they are extrememly understaffed but cry that were operating within the minimum standards set by our government.People with your mentality need to end up in a nursing home for your last days on life so that you can experience laying in your own mess waiting for someone who has 10 other people to change before they get to you.Due to the lack of staff and you not being changed in a timely fashion you end up with bedsores you can put your fist in.Then you can reflect back.Don't say where's my nurse, say I ASKED FOR THIS! Thank You God for showing me my ignorance!!!!!

buck227 · Mar 29, 2001

Postal,

I find your rebuttal amusing and entertaining. I have a great sympathy for Nursing home staff. My girlfriend left the hospital not long ago to be house supervisor at a nursing home and she found it to be very overbearing. It is so sad that those people don't recieve the care they are due. It is extremly hard work working in a long term care facility and I have the utmost respect for those who do that job. It is a thankless task and to be done well, requires a true professional.

Basically our disagreement boils down to a simple difference in the way we believe government should work. Many Americans make the same mistake especially in this time. They forget the days in this world of national socialism and totalitarian rule. If you study history and you believe in the constitution of the United States you will learn that government intervention is very dangerous. More laws and legislation solve nothing. They complicate the system and take away freedom with every stroke of the pen.

Many misunderstand what I mean by the quiting tactic. I have explained it over and over and it is very simple. The businesses that provide care in this country have to provide some sort of minimum standard that is excepted by the people. If that standard falls below an exceptable level, no one will patronize that institution anymore and they will go out of business. Someone else will open up another facility that will attempt to provide that minimum standard of acceptable care. This is called free enterprise and it works as a system. It is not a perfect system, but it is the best system tested by history and can be related to any business, not just healthcare.

There is no excuse in the United States for saying you are trapped in a position of employment. There is no indentered servatude here. There is no slavery. Although many will argue that they can't leave their current position because of certain reasons, the word "can"t" just isn't true. They really mean that they "can't" because they are not willing to move or they "can't" because they are not willing to accept a pay cut or what ever.

They CAN'T replace RNs with patient care assistants. They can try for a short period, but eventually the public just won't accept that level of care and it will fail. There has to be RNs and LPNs in the system just like there has to be MDs.

I no longer work in a hospital setting. I have for many years, but I now work outside of the system. As for your attack on my mental capacity, it shows your inability to articulate an aurgument without resorting to personal attack. It robs you of your credability as a professional and makes you look like a dumbass, so don't do that in the future if you wish people to pay attention to what you are saying. You make a snap judgement as to my mentality and you have no idea of who I am or what my mentality is so basically I am telling you to **** off.

ok, Buck so your ready to give up nursing.Your going to be replaced by a PCT (patient care technician) at less than half the rate and about 1/3 of the knowledge.You obviously work in a hospital setting and have the mentality of an ostrich.You have your head buried firmly in the sand.When you transfer patients out of the hospital to sub-acute rehab centers that have one nurse for 30 patients and 4 CNA's that your responsible for you would want a change.Why are all of these nursing homes around the country being sued.Substandard care!! Do you think the employee's at these facilties care any less. NO! they don't, they are extrememly understaffed but cry that were operating within the minimum standards set by our government.People with your mentality need to end up in a nursing home for your last days on life so that you can experience laying in your own mess waiting for someone who has 10 other people to change before they get to you.Due to the lack of staff and you not being changed in a timely fashion you end up with bedsores you can put your fist in.Then you can reflect back.Don't say where's my nurse, say I ASKED FOR THIS! Thank You God for showing me my ignorance!!!!!

Stargazer · Mar 29, 2001

Originally posted by rncountry:
I'm sorry that you find what I write boring, or as a story, it is the way I communicate when I am trying to show why I believe what I believe.

rncountry, I doubt I would find your posts boring if I were able to read them, as you seem very impassioned and clearly generate equally impassioned responses. With all due respect, though, I find it just as difficult visually to read very long, unbroken posts as I do reading posts that are in all caps. It's simply not worth giving myself a headache over.

I wonder if, in deference to those of us who are similarly impaired, you would consider breaking up your posts a bit? Paragraphs are good. White space is our friend. Thanks.

Edited because dictionaries are our friends, too.

[This message has been edited by Stargazer (edited March 28, 2001).]

rncountry · Mar 29, 2001

Thank you for your suggestion.

-jt · Mar 30, 2001

Originally posted by postaledde:
Let's look at the math and the current way things are being done. the agency charges the facility $50 an hour at a rate of $2,000 for the week. If I was to hire 2 nurses at $20 an hour for that same 40 hours I would only spend $1600. I have given you an extra staff member decreasing your work load which makes you want to stay.I have given you a fair wage and saved the facility $400. .

Not really because you didnt factor in the cost of benefits, time on the books (vacations, holidays,etc) & other expenses of hiring FTEs/PTEs

(full time employees/part time employees). Its more than just salary. And when census is low, you cant just cancel that hired employee. They are still on your payroll & still an expense to you even when you dont need them. If you fill the holes with agency that can be canceled when not needed, you dont have the headache of having to downsize either. Because of all this, it is more cost-effective - business wise - for the hospitals to not fill vacancies & just use agency when they need them - or spread out the staff they do have with heavier assignments. Even though it looks to us like that costs them more - it really doesnt. To the numbers-crunchers, its just good business sense.

-jt · Mar 30, 2001

If every state in the country passes the legislation that they have, is that going to decrease the shortage or increase it? It will increase it. Where are all the extra nurses going to come from? We do not have enough now to fill the spots that are open. Do you think that suddenly all the people that left are going to come flocking back, after finding 8 to 5 jobs without all the aggravations, with better pay, and no weekends? [Q]
No...conditions have to be improved first...but we do have the numbers of nurses out there now, if they can be enticed to come back to work. A survey was done in one state that shows that enough RNs wanted to come back & would if conditions were different. The survey showed that so many would return to work that the nursing shortage there would be obliterated.
heres something elsse, too...
"Salary increase spurs return of ex-nurses
Refresher courses in big demand
Former nurses in Calgary are rushing to rejoin the profession following a recent provincial settlement of 22 per cent more money over two years....." http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news1/stories/010326/5069237.html

Doc · Mar 31, 2001

Wow I missed a lot in a few days! Wildtime, the internet allows me to keep in touch with what is happening in your country, and I must say there are a few differences. For instance, here the word "thong" means those flip-flaps you wear on your feet, so I had the mental picture of you mud-wrestling, wearing nothing but a single flip-flap!!!

I don't really see the relevance of your argument about how selfish people can be in society. You don't need to buy into that mentality. However, in view that people want to meet their own needs first (call it selfishness, Maslow's theory or whatever you like) the public will not look to striking or walking out very well, and the image of nursing is going to suffer even more. I don't like the idea of private facilities setting the standard. For a start that is not the same as nurses empowering themselves to make the change. Secondly, the goal for these organisations will always be cost-cutting. Sure, for a while they may try to attract nurses with good conditions, as many new facilities have done. Don't expect it to last.

I was unable to find that article you mentioned on http://massnurses.org, so forgive me, but I fail to see how legislation has to take the power away from nurses, if it is done in the right way.

As for Buck's argument that we will not get people to come back to the profession, I think we need to stick with attracting more people to study nursing, as well as to provide the right conditions for them to stick with it until graduation or throughout a full career.

lita1857 · Apr 1, 2001

Doc I am sitting here LOL till my sides hurt...the visual of the "thong" versus a pair of "flip flops" AKA thong is just crack'in me up ....THANKS!

CEN35 · Apr 5, 2001

Originally posted by CEN35:
OK I was drawn to this thread by wildtime through a post she made under the emergency nursing area.

oO (before I go on, wild ya can email me a pic of you in a thong I would like to see it)and no thats not a cut down, cut downs get nobody anywhere fast.

#1 - I see wild, rex, buck, and a few others turning this into a beat everybody else up campaign. Why not just change the name of this thread to "let's tell everybody who posts here, how stupid, naeive and arrogant we are?" Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, chauvenistsic too!

A) - I se RN ccountries valid points. She obviously feels that the march may help show some unity among nurses, which is clearly what our proffesion has needed all along.

B)- Despite how some others may feel or think, legislating mandotory staffing (with penalties by law) is the first step in correcting part of the situation. The second step being, that once our goverment has acknowledged the need for more nurses/increase staffing, they may consider Federal funding towards sending students to nursing school, and paying for their education. Or even better yet, funding to the hospitals to do this, with a 2-5 yr mandate of working for the facility once passing boards.

C) Look at wilds earlier post? Can families tell you what you do at work? Does the public know? All the questions she asked on that post (on this thread are legitimate not pessemistic). If your own family doesn't know......or your neighbors or friends don't know, how the hell is the public going to know? All she said, was ask a few of your friends or people you know? Are scared that wild is right? Do they think we are nothing but bedpan pushers and pill passers?

more later have to go

CEN35 · Apr 5, 2001

Continued -

The way I see it goverment intervention is a last resort. The thing everybody should be looking for with the March, is media publicity. We all know by now (or should have) that the public does not care about any issues not concerning them. Most have no clue, because of a lack of education on issues. Most of the public is educated on issues of any sort by the media. This pretty much goes with the goverment also. Unfortunately I'll bet while most of you bitching here, very few if any have sat down and wrote a letter to congress. Any takers on this new poll? "concerned about staffing issue and patient safety? Have you wrote a letter to your congressman?"

Despite "Involving goverment can be dangerous" as someone earlier posted.....it is a last result.

Most nurses I know will not go on strike for ethical reasons and/or money.

Unions are not the answer, because they carry and support the dead weight.

Administrations don't care. I went to a recent meeting in our system. One of the topics was quality of care and agency nurses.

Of the four hospitals involved, the hospital with the highest customer satisfaction was ours(we'll call it hospital #1), while the lowest was (we'll call it) hospital #4).

On the other hand, Hospital #1 spent 1.2 million dollars for the year in agency nurses. Hospital #4 spent 6.4 million dollars in agency nurses. This is not intended to reflect poor care on the part of agency nurses. It does show the possibility that with a lack of staff or regular staff, patient satisfaction goes down. While I don't have statistics of the sort, my assumption is that there could also be a relation to patient safety.

I work with a couple people that work agency...they don't pick up extra hours for us..... they do it for the money which is why most do.

Our current nursing shortage is due to the nurses working agency for the money, and law firms and insurance companies for the 5 days a week schedule, etc etc. If the money was there, I'll bet those people would head back towards the hospitals.

However, that does not effect the future. Nursing schools are closing down, nursing grads are decreasing. the schools that are left are having trouble filling the open spots. The future of nursing lies in the recruiting new nurses. I still think the way to go is to have the goverment fund hospitals, who in turn use the money to pay for school for new recruits. Then they would have to work, X- amount of years. Kind of like a restricted free agency.

I have mentioned to out COO, why not pay the regular staff more money? Like agency people? they claim the agencies will pay more then, and it will leave them at ground zero again. I don't beleive that one. While it might happen......if all systems did this.....they may not be able to afford to pay agencies, which would put the agencies out of bussiness.....send ing nurses back to the hospital. Just a thought? Everybody on here has had some ludicrous thoughts, as well as good ones.

We nee to work with each other, not against each other. The 1st 20 or so posts, clearly indicate no unity here, just who can blast the other person. soooooooo????? Lets stop that.

CEN35 (Rick)

pickledpepperRN · Apr 7, 2001

If I am broadsided on one of our famous freeways how will I tell the paramedics not to send me to an understaffed hospital?

"Let the market decide" only works when customers have the choice not to buy. With a rib in my liver and lung, how can I say, "Oh well, I would rather have a competent RN than this teenaged aide floated from postpartum to admit me, so I'll just go to another hospital"?

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