HELP with article re: nursing shortage

Nurses Activism

Published

Hi, I posted this on the Polls forum but would like input from you also in case you don't visit there.

I recently sent a letter to the editor of our newspaper responding to their recent article about the nursing shortage. He replied to me that he would like me to expand my letter so that it could be used in the Sunday Opinion section.

I stated to him that even though the nursing population is frequently referred to as "aging", many hospitals require us to work 12 hour shifts. Due to hospital cuts we are assigned more patients and due to insurance requirements, the patients are much sicker. I stated that in some areas, the person who checks you out at the grocery store has better benefits and gets paid more than nurses. I wrote more but ended my letter by saying that hospitals are losing a wealth of knowledge and experience when they lose their "aging nursing population".

PLEASE HELP. This is our chance to let the public hear our concerns!!!

If you work in a hospital now, how many patients are you assigned on a typical day? What is the care level of those patients? What duties do you have to do that you don't consider "nursing"? Approx. what is your pay?

If you can think of anything else you would like to put in this article, please let me know. No names will be used in my "expanded letter" so please, be honest.

I have to have this letter sent to him by Monday, Dec. 23, so PLEASE RESPOND!!!

Thank you...maybe we can make a difference.

Dear Arby, I am pretty sure I posted a resposne to this question under polls, I hope you saw it.

check your private messages too

Hi,

I tried to write "A Modest Proposal to Solve the Current Nursing Shortage." I based it on Jonathon Swift's essay, "A Modest Proposal", still considered the best example of satire ever written(BTW, you can find a version of it on the internet, just do a search for Jonathon Swift, Modest Proposal. Jonathon Swift also wrote, "Gullivers Travels").

He proposed that the only way to solve the problem of poverty in Ireland was to eat the children of Irish Catholics at one year of age. My solution was far less radical but Swift's would probably work better.

We surely would improve our economic advantage if nurses were sold to be butchered and eaten after, say, twenty years of work. Doctors, hospitals would have to treat us nicely, otherwise we would lose our flavor. Sounds harsh but, really, aren't we just changing the order of our eating? We eat our young, don't we?

What do y'all think of this modest proposal? The AJN didn't think its tone was positive enough.

The AJN didn't think its tone was positive enough.

So try http://www.advancefornurses.com

http://www.nursingspectrum.com

or any of the other nursing journals.

Sounds like its would be good for a smile at the least.

I just wanted to thank all of you for your responses to my post. My letter was e-mailed to the editor this morning and I will let you know if they indeed use it as they said they would.

Thanks for all your help:kiss

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