LTC being affected by the economy?

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Oct 31, 2008

I'm curious because I'll be graduating shortly. It seems there have been a number of threads where RNs are discussing having trouble finding jobs in hospitals and some are turning to LTC. So for those of you in LTC, are your facilities hiring less frequently or seeing far more applicants than open positions?

In addition to my full-time job, I work several part-time jobs at various nursing homes. Some of the facilities in my area are having trouble filling the skilled Medicare beds because less patients are at the hospital, which translates into less discharges to the nursing home.

The skilled Medicare beds at nursing homes are usually filled with elderly patients who have just been discharged from the hospital, but they are deemed too debilitated to go home just yet.

sasha2lady · Mar 12, 2009

My sister in law is an RN ....works as some kind of nurse mgr at a hospital and she may not have job come september b/c she is contracted in...she said the hospital was in the process of cutting jobs and were going to let go some ppl who'd been there 15 yrs in nursing. ...all d/t economy. AT my facility which is ltc....they cut our yrly raise down from 3% to 1.5% ...same thing...economy related they say. I cant speak of any nurses being hired p/t or f/t at my place recently..only 1 prn nurse who like the rest of our prn's ...never comes in.

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Mar 13, 2009

One of my workplaces recently started forcing nurses, CNAs, and other hourly workers to take 1 hour unpaid lunch breaks instead of the customary 30 minute meal period in order to save money while census is low.

However, I shall mention that the employee turnover rate is high at this facility, and management is still constantly having to hire people to replace the workers who leave.

Lexxie, LPN · Mar 13, 2009

One of my workplaces recently started forcing nurses, CNAs, and other hourly workers to take 1 hour unpaid lunch breaks instead of the customary 30 minute meal period in order to save money while census is low.
However, I shall mention that the employee turnover rate is high at this facility, and management is still constantly having to hire people to replace the workers who leave.

Yikes! How do you get your work done being forced to take an hour lunch? There's no way I could have done that at the LTC I worked in.

systoly · Mar 13, 2009

....and I still can't take an extra day off (even when my wife just got home from the hospital), because there's no one to cover the shift.