note to nurse dude, will they never learn!

[bunky]

Hi Oramar! I'm baaacckkk.... I am seeing something here that I don't like to see, yet it is becoming apparent to me and I wonder, am I losing it or is this for real? I don't know the facility or the exact situation that you replied to Nursedude about but it's not just happening there! It's all over.

I have, as you may recall, been working agency for awhile now. The things I have been noticing are blowing me away. Oramar they fire nurses who seem to remember what the old staffing ratios were. And here's what else I notice. You go in and find that today you have 13 patients where yesterday you had 6. You think to yourself "My God this is insane! I can't do this many patients", and by the grace of God you make it thru that day with no one dead. The next day you have 9 patients and consider it a great day. But next week you are at 11 pt's again and still manage because you did 13 before. It seems like we are being conditioned to take on more and more, so that the days when you have 10 pt's become the norm to you. It's like they are slowly but surely trying to build up our tolerance levels to take on more and more, and it's done silently. Those that refuse, or long too loudly for a return to the days of having 6 pt's find themselves without a job. And who cares about replacing them cause they now have the rest conditioned to take up the slack?!

Have I been watching too many Oliver Stone movies, or is anyone else seeing this too?

[oramar]

Originally posted by Zee_RN:

My community hospital in the Pittsburgh area is so hard-up for nurses that the HR Dept. is telephoning RNs who have quit within the last couple years and offering them their jobs back (no doubt at greatly increased pay) and keeping their previous seniority intact. I don't know of anyone who has taken them up on this offer but it drives those who have stayed nuts.

Recruitment and Retention are big buzz words these days. But no, they just don't get it. While pay is important (especially since your salary is largely equated with how much respect your profession is granted), it's the horrendous WORKING CONDITIONS and lack of PATIENT SAFETY that drives a lot of nurses out the door.

Everything you said is true. The fact that no one is accepting the offer is pretty damning. I can almost guess what facility you are talking about.

[SUBQ]

It is far easier to quit a job like this one and find another one than it is to get your name and license tarnished by working for a cut-throat hospital.

They will pay dearly for there mistakes.

They will find out the reality that when you cut cost by cutting back on nurses and aides, that morale goes down the toilet: med errors increase, people call in sick more often, people quit, transcription and procedure errors will rise and what little they saved by cutting costs--will kick their A$$ in lawsuits!!!

Think about it...

[LaurieCRNP2002, MSN, RN, APRN]

I totally agree with you, SUBQ! The bigwigs think they're saving big $$$ but in the long run, it will cost them! At my hospital, many nurses have left and will continue to do so. Why wouldn't RN's go to another hospital or agency that pays much better? There are other hospitals in the area that have respectable staffing levels, so my facility is hemorrhaging nurses faster than you can say "direct pressure"! I plan to follow suit, but initially will keep my "per diem" status while I make sure "agency" nursing is for me.

Good luck and God bless all those who remain in hospital nursing!

[goldilocksrn]

I don't know about any of you, but I am a generation Xer, and my philosophy regarding nursing is this: I am going to have to take a load of crap being a hospital nurse, and the crap is pretty much the same at every hospital. Why not make more money and get more for me while taking this crap? I have sadly come to the realization that money talks, and since we as nurses have none, it will take someone very important dying and one of us to blame it on before something will be done to remedy this situation. Right now, the CHW hospital is allowing people to leave in droves rather than pay their nurses what their worth and staff them safely. They are making all of these plans to expand since they shut the only other hospital in town down (Tenet by the way)and we got NONE of their nurses. What they don't understand is that they can't expand with LESS staff. (Unless they plan on forcing us to take on even MORE patients, which will make more of us quit) I just don't get it. They need more bedside nurses in management!!!

[OC_An Khe]

I am always surprised by the lack of foresight practised by some members of the Hospital Industry.They feel RN's can always take more patients...does this reach to infinity? I think not. Those facilities that keep expanding patient nurse ratios will eventually have to return to more acceptable levels or face extinction.

There is another danger in RN's accepting continuously higher ratios in that the become use to them and forget what quality patient care really is. The new RN's entering the field will assume this is correct and never experience what nursing was and should be about.