Nursing Shortage

sef1968 · Jun 18, 2006

I make $12 an hour and work not far from D/FW. :scrying:

cost of living area.
If the cola is low, then 12/hr in say, some town in Ark, might be on par w/ 18/hr in So Cal.
~faith
Timothy.

Hospice4me · Jun 18, 2006

Wow, I guess some places can afford to get applications and not hire anyone but not here! I think that the lack of slots in nursing programs is a major problem. We are not graduating enough nurses to keep up with the need. We are short staffed now. We have had 4 applications in 3 months. 3 of 4 have been offered positions and 1 was not because she job hopped so much. (2-4 months then changed jobs, 2-4 months then changed again and so on) Of course, all had interviewed at other places and had 2 or 3 other offers. Our applicants are usually nurses fed up with hospital nursing and are looking for a change.All we can do here is try to make better offers than everyone else. I hate to hear a new nurse saying they can't get a job!

I just can't believe it!! I can understand specialities but medsurg in a hospital is where many nurses get their start. If they are so short staffed why not hire new grads? A new grad should be turning down offers!

ortess1971 · Jun 21, 2006

The Nursing Shortage.
Are the answers to be found in studies of oppression and gender bias? Or should I look to long history of physician abuse against nurses? I have spent the last year trying to wrap my brain around that question. It eludes me. Ironically, I was pumped up by nursing itself, but so, so discouraged by the process that the old guard feels you must endure in order to get there. Healthcare is a dynamic and changing profession, why is nursing education not? Have the gatekeepers of nursing fled the halls of the hospitals to halls of academia where they can mete out the same horrific oppression they endured? There is truth to the tired cliché that the oppressed make the best oppressors.
I have another degree and have attended other schools. I was thrilled to return to school as an adult student to attend a nursing program at a large state school in Chicago. Dreams of Higher learning and Intellectual endeavor danced in my pretty if misguided head...Higher Learning? What a Joke. Nursing the profession may be noble, but nursing education is not.
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The medical surgical program at the college I attended is a hotbed of racism and sexism. Should a student protest, he or she will be ignored, or better yet, ground to dust by boring administrative prose and even more boring administrators. If you can bring in research dollars- the students matter not, they are collateral damage after all.
And a Masters Degree in Nursing does not a Teacher Make. Our dean just became a Big Time FAAN. I wish I knew or cared what a FAAN was. Having the whole alphabet follow your name is a status symbol in nursing. I wish our dean knew or cared about how deeply unhappy the students in her program were. While she's away getting made up for the six o'clock news, or traversing Kenya or Belize peering at hot house flowers or mating gazelles, her students are suffering at the hands of an embattled and embittered faculty- exhausted and angry. The students benefitting from their collective unhappiness. Spreading the joy so to speak.
Nursing Education is a dark, dank, sour, wretched abyss. They are very accustomed to twenty- year old white girls. If you're not in that demographic, they have no clue what to do with you, the student body of nursing is changing. The nursing student is no longer for the most part white, female or young. Nursing instruction will have to swallow the bitter pill of accommodation.
And whatever you do. Don't have opinions or challenge them. Your doom will be sealed. You should critically think, but by god don't independently think.
It makes me laugh- these dusty, starched and linear thinking matrons telling us that nursing is a caring profession.
Ha, everyone is moaning and groaning about a nursing shortage- look no further than the institutions that allow this abuse and abusive individuals to vent their collective ill will or exorcise their own personal demons on the unsuspecting in name of education. No one will ever get me to go along with the idea that their actions are justified in the names of the patients they profess to be saving with their rigor, and vigor. I have worked in hospitals for the last six years and it was the nurses I worked with that inspired me to become a nurse. NOTHING prepared me for the surly harridans that teach nursing. Their greatest service to the profession will be retirement. Once this old guard is laid to rest- will change come about?

checkers · Jun 22, 2006

I too am a job-less, on my way to hope-less, new RN grad. I have applied to 5 hospitals in my city. I had 1 interview, but the interviewer thought I wasn't ready for the new-grad critical care position. The other places never even offered an interview. I don't think I can fill out another long on-line app with the even longer personality tests. I am exhausted. I have since decided to move to another city... so maybe all this was for the best. As I started my new search, I was all energized, but am now running into the same problem again.

I have searched through so many online job listings on hospital web-sites, and see 20 jobs that I appear qualified for, then I get an email back stating they are not hiring new-grads at this time, "we'll keep you on file for 6 months". I would be happy to take anything right now, and that isn't a good thing, hearing what conditions i can wind up in. But at this point, a bad job is better than no job

momdebo, BSN, RN · Jun 22, 2006

Amen!!!!!

momdebo, BSN, RN · Jun 22, 2006

Very well put, afraid I don't have an answer to the question posed, but am in complete agreement with you.

momdebo, BSN, RN · Jun 22, 2006

I'm in agreement with all this. funny for me, I went temp relief april 23, that's like a prn at my facility, I now have a career as an on call nurse, haven't worked a shift since 4-23, my family keeps asking me about the "nursing shortage"!!!!, I say"apparently there is a patient shortage at my facility!". I look at the unions men have, men who have dropped out of school, the benefits they have, the power they have, why can't nursing have this?

sunnyjohn · Jun 22, 2006

I'm in agreement with all this. funny for me, I went temp relief april 23, that's like a prn at my facility, I now have a career as an on call nurse, haven't worked a shift since 4-23, my family keeps asking me about the "nursing shortage"!!!!, I say"apparently there is a patient shortage at my facility!". I look at the unions men have, men who have dropped out of school, the benefits they have, the power they have, why can't nursing have this?

'Cause we're "professionals" and "professionals" don't have unions. That's blue-collar stuff! :lol2:

pfftt!

We better do something fast. Less talky, more walky.

HARRN2b · Jun 22, 2006

Willing to stay close to home may be the answer to the job situation. You may need to relocate to an area of the country where growth is occuring (new hospitals being built), and larger populations. I was just reading your post and had this thought. I will eventually be in your shoes. I am in school. I have already figured that I will need to relocate.

Sheri257 · Jun 22, 2006

As far as new grads not getting jobs ... there may be other reasons for this. I live in California where the hospitals are literally beating down the doors to hire us. During each semester just about every hospital takes the graduating class out to lunch to make a pitch.

BUT, as it turns out, our school graduates later than other schools in the area. So, by the time our new grads apply a lot of those positions are already filled by dozens of grads from other schools. Even though there's a shortage ... you have to keep in mind that during graduation time, some hospitals can only orient so many new grads at one time.

This is especially the case at hospitals where the pay and benefits are a lot better than other hospitals. Those hospitals are flooded with new grad applications and, a lot of times, they won't hire any more new grads until they've finished training the ones they've already hired. They also don't have as many new grad openings because they tend to retain staff with the better pay and benefits.

However, if other hospitals are merely "competitive," as they like to say ... which really means the pay and benefits are lower than others then, it's a different story ... because not as many people want to work there.

:typing

Sheri257 · Jun 22, 2006

There is NO shortage. Nursing schools are cranking out just as many grads as they always have. People are standing in line to get into school, waiting years to be accepted. The "Shortage" is nothing more than propaganda put out by hospitals and nursing homes to excuse their poor staffing practices. They'd much rather have the public think that they (hospitals and nursing homes) are doing everything they can to staff safely, but can't find any nurses to do so. When in reality, there could be thousands of nurses beating the doors down while staffing levels remain low enough for the CEOs to take home their 6 digit paycheck.

Don't get me wrong ... I totally agree with what you're saying. But I also think it's a little more complicated than that.

In California we've had a ratio law for a couple of years now, which has drastically improved working conditions. By most accounts, a lot of semi-retired RN's have come back to work because of it.

Still ... there's no end in sight to the shortage here. There's an estimated 22,000 nursing vacancies in the state, even with ratios.

I think it's because of a number of factors: while ratios have improved working conditions it's also contributed to the shortage somewhat because the hospitals have to hire more RN's to meet ratios. California is still 49th in the number of RN's per capita. Aging baby boomers are also tremendously increasing demand for nursing services.

While there may be thousands of RN's who aren't working, the data shows that a lot of them are over age 50, so they may not want or need to work in nursing anymore. Some of them are friends of mine and they simply don't want to work at any job anymore, even though they keep up their licenses.

On the other hand, I do see hospitals that are stubborn, for lack of a better term, and don't raise their pay and benefits as much as other employers. Some hospitals are actually cutting benefits, which is nuts. But then there are other hospitals that do pay better, they tend to have the same staffing problems.

So ... I do think it's a combination of factors.

:typing

coolchik4sure · Jul 7, 2006

Wow, propaganda huh? I have a marketing budget I need to show you. Nurses don't answer my ads. I have competitive wages and job responsibility. I have an idea... Nurses don't want to work anymore. People are scheduled to work for 12 hours but they don't want to work. One ounce of pressure to perform and they are gone. Then I spend more money to get another person hired. Then spend money to train them. It is a terrible cycle that doesn't stop because nurses don't want to work. There are not enough nurses working to meet the needs. This going to get worse.
My question is, How do we get nurses back to the field? Why are they leaving?

You want nurses, you have a marketing budget, you spend more money to get another person hired, spend money to train them, why are they leaving??? Maybe it's just me, but you don't seem concerned with the actual working conditions for the nurses, but how much money this is costing you. [banana]WHOA[/banana]