Loss of all personal freedom.

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I am just wondering but as a veteran who fought for his country. Then went to college to become a nurse. How does everyone feel about the loss of personal freedom in healthcare. Hospitals that test for legal substances in the blood (i.e. nicotine) and deny employment. Even in states that workers are protected because hospitals are " non profit" even though we all know they are for profit as you can get cause your CEO drives a jaguar. Denying employment to workers they consider obese and overweight. What are we going to do as Americans and Nurses when they test us for artificial flavorings and sugar products and deny employment. This trend will not stop. The slippery slope has begun.

Specializes in Adult Primary Care.

I have no problem with not hiring smokers, or offering and paying for health insurance to smokers. Maybe because 50% of our practice is pulmonary. Then again, I could consider smokers an annuity!

0 Votes
Specializes in NICU.

Without order you have chaos.Thank you for your service.From what I have seen this has not happened in my local, but those caught on video stealing or selling /doing illegal substances are not meeting their employment terms. The bar has been raised true but not in the way you mention.The employer does sign your paycheck as much as we hate to admit it.

0 Votes

You lost me at the title. Loss of ALL personal freedom. That's HARDLY the case here. Then the OP throws in the liberal "insult", as if a political stance has any bearing on this discussion.

Sure we have some restrictions in places that I do not agree with, but there are plenty of freedoms we have now that we didn't before. It's up to US to decide what is something we will tolerate and what isn't. If you don't agree with a particular hiring requirement for a facility - it's pretty simple to me DON'T WORK THERE. If enough people disagree with the policy it will be rescinded.

At my current full time employer you pay A LOT more for your insurance if you smoke, you a pay a small amount more if you are overweight, if your have HTN, diabetes, etc - and you aren't making changes to improve your health. I don't smoke, I don't have HTN, diabetes or any of the other standards, but I am considered overweight by my BMI. I am making changes to improve my health. I don't consider it to be some great detriment to me. Darn my employer for being part of the process to hold me accountable for being healthy.. How dare they!

I did disagree with many of the policies at my former employer. So I left. And guess what.. so did many others. Now some of those policies have been changed. I still won't go back because I really like what I currently do, but the process still worked.

I try to address problems when I see them. If I've tried and it's going no where I decide if it is really a battle I'm willing to quit over. If it is.. I talk with my feet. If not I keep trying to make the change or accept it and move on.

0 Votes

I just read the headline on a newspaper in the doctor's office today. It seems some employers in California/Colorado are relaxing the 'no THC' rules due to a scarce number of eligible workers. I guess the point being when a requirement starts to become a nuisance to a business more than a help, then prospective employers will change it.

0 Votes

At the large state facility where I used to work, there was no place to smoke on the premises, and no one to count and take the keys if a nurse wanted to leave the facility during the shift. There was also no smoking in the parking lot, even in your car.

So, while they didn't test people for nicotine, essentially any smoker would have to prepare for an 8 to 16 hour day without it.

I knew people who didn't pass their probation for this reason.

0 Votes
Specializes in CPN.

I remember the more innocent days of bring your license, show up and work that day. Now it is fingerprints, a 3 month long background checks and urine screens.

My mentor told me about a doctor that she met recently. When he was in high school he used to just put on scrubs and walk into Parkland ER and pass as an intern. He would do grunt work and stitches even. Can you imagine!?!?

0 Votes
What everyone is missing here is it's the insurance companies and the government that dictates all health care. From mandatory flu shots to insurance companies passing edits down on all healthcare and there employees. Nothing but corporate greed and a bunch of upper admin like the 1st replier to this post that tow the company line with some liberal propaganda while showing the homeless from the waiting room back into the street.

First, I'll start with the most important part of your post.

Toe the line. Unless the line is in the wrong place, and unable to move on it's own, it will not need to be towed.

Regarding liberal propaganda: HUH? What on earth are you talking about?

Is this a liberal VS conservative issue? If so, I am sorry to say you are not taking a conservative viewpoint.

I am a business owner, and I choose to screen employees for nicotine, as I know hiring them will drive up my costs. If that increases my costs by reducing the hiring pool and driving up labor costs, then maybe I'll change my mind. Until that point, I'll thank you to keep the government out of my business.

It is an insult to my conservative values to imply that it is the role of government to impose a law to force me to hire somebody.

0 Votes
Specializes in EMS, ED, Trauma, CEN, CPEN, TCRN.

Also a veteran, also a nurse. I have far more freedom now as a civilian than I did when I was active duty! Technically they still own me as I am in the IRR, but they won't want me after all my postpartum cardiac issues. lol.

FWIW, I work for a healthcare system that doesn't penalize smokers, but it rewards non-smokers with a tobacco-free discount on our health insurance.

0 Votes
Specializes in Case Manager/Administrator.

Coming from a military family freedom can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I know in the Kurdish camps freedom means having their own country and not being suppressed from Sunnis or Shiites. For me freedom means I can say what I want to say baring harmful things like I am going to end your life...threats or for that matter yelling out in a crowd fire when there is none...those kinds of things that stupid people do. Additionally freedom means I can live anywhere I want in the United States and have any weapon I want to protect my family and property. To my friend who is working in Rwanda freedom to them at this time means being able to walk to the well to get water safely. When my kids were teenagers freedom to them meant the ability to go out when they got their drivers license.

Freedom comes with responsibility and responsibility come with restrictions. It is a matter of perspective. I personally like a happy medium. I am not opposed to harsher background checks for my weapons however there is a limit to what I will feel is appropriate (safety classes and background checks are OK to me) I think we need to pick our battles carefully and lean towards a more simple way of thinking. We will not please everyone and if I did I seriously think I did something wrong.

What I an finding is this...

We can go down the slippery slope of no smoking, no hiring obese people, no hiring members of the skin heads, no hiring member that are LGBT, hiring females at a rate 30 percent less...we all have choices I do not care about your smoking as long as I do not have to walk through the smoke on my into the front door, I do not care about your weight unless it is interfering with our working together you cannot do your job, I do not care if you choose to be a skin head as long as you do not talk about what your activities are at work and your treatment of everyone is the same respectful manner, I do not care about who you like male/female/transgender/pansexual it is none of my business unless you make it my business and sue me because I will not make a cake for you (just take your business somewhere else and give them a bad review), and me being a female I can negotiate with the best of them to get the best pay I can.

Business has a right to place criteria in their work environment, we live in a capital world if you do not like it just do not go to that business take your dollars elsewhere, I do. Health Insurance companies do have some blanket policies. Most commercial Insurance companies serve the business, it is the company you work for that determines what kind of benefits they want to give their employees. Insurance companies do not pocket the monies when they do not pay out that money goes back to the company you work for.

We have gone down a many slippery slopes the past 20 years and things keep changing. It is not just corporate greed it is too many divided people who will not meet others half way. Change, real change occurs when diverse people both liberal and conservative band together for a simple common cause/ideal in a manner that is respectful to both sides, no drama just pure willingness to operate together. What spoils the atmosphere is the inability to work together for a common cause despite differences.

0 Votes

Penalizing smokers, vs giving non-smokers a discount, is all semantics.

When you are talking about money, people respond very strongly, and irrationally, to the words "penalty" or "fine". The word "fee" is much more neutral.

Any reasonable person will agree that smokers, in general, incur more health expenses, although they probably don't think it applies to them.

Thus, if you frame it - our regular health insurance rates are x, however we can offer non-smokers our x-y rates.

The minute you start talking "penalties", there is psychological manipulation, which is astonishingly easy to do, and particularly with money.

0 Votes
For some jobs, such limitations are reasonable. For example -- the job of playing a Disney princess at one of their theme parks. An old fat guy (or old fat woman like me) needs to accept the fact that we are not a good match for that particular job.

^This is an 'Apples and Oranges', straw man argument. I believe the OP was suggesting that both employees were like suited for the position and physical appearance did not make one more uniquely qualified. I have worked as a staff/travel nurse all over the country and I assure you, age discrimination is widely practiced (although not so thinly veiled). Years of clinical experience mean little to the hiring managers when a young and impressionable graduate nurse (that they can also pay much less) is also vying for the position.

0 Votes
Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
Coming from a military family freedom can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I know in the Kurdish camps freedom means having their own country and not being suppressed from Sunnis or Shiites. For me freedom means I can say what I want to say baring harmful things like I am going to end your life...threats or for that matter yelling out in a crowd fire when there is none...those kinds of things that stupid people do. Additionally freedom means I can live anywhere I want in the United States and have any weapon I want to protect my family and property. To my friend who is working in Rwanda freedom to them at this time means being able to walk to the well to get water safely. When my kids were teenagers freedom to them meant the ability to go out when they got their drivers license.

Freedom comes with responsibility and responsibility come with restrictions. It is a matter of perspective. I personally like a happy medium. I am not opposed to harsher background checks for my weapons however there is a limit to what I will feel is appropriate (safety classes and background checks are OK to me) I think we need to pick our battles carefully and lean towards a more simple way of thinking. We will not please everyone and if I did I seriously think I did something wrong.

What I an finding is this...

We can go down the slippery slope of no smoking, no hiring obese people, no hiring members of the skin heads, no hiring member that are LGBT, hiring females at a rate 30 percent less...we all have choices I do not care about your smoking as long as I do not have to walk through the smoke on my into the front door, I do not care about your weight unless it is interfering with our working together you cannot do your job, I do not care if you choose to be a skin head as long as you do not talk about what your activities are at work and your treatment of everyone is the same respectful manner, I do not care about who you like male/female/transgender/pansexual it is none of my business unless you make it my business and sue me because I will not make a cake for you (just take your business somewhere else and give them a bad review), and me being a female I can negotiate with the best of them to get the best pay I can.

Business has a right to place criteria in their work environment, we live in a capital world if you do not like it just do not go to that business take your dollars elsewhere, I do. Health Insurance companies do have some blanket policies. Most commercial Insurance companies serve the business, it is the company you work for that determines what kind of benefits they want to give their employees. Insurance companies do not pocket the monies when they do not pay out that money goes back to the company you work for.

We have gone down a many slippery slopes the past 20 years and things keep changing. It is not just corporate greed it is too many divided people who will not meet others half way. Change, real change occurs when diverse people both liberal and conservative band together for a simple common cause/ideal in a manner that is respectful to both sides, no drama just pure willingness to operate together. What spoils the atmosphere is the inability to work together for a common cause despite differences.

This says it all the best.

0 Votes
+ Add a Comment