Nursing Shortage

SummerGarden, BSN, MSN, RN · Jul 7, 2006

I agree with the Posters that write that there is no Nursing Shortage. Working conditions for nurses are poor in many areas. So Hospitals and other facilities claim that there is a Nursing Shortage.

Has anyone ever looked at nurses working in other industries? I don't hear Insurance Agencies complaining of not having enough nurses, but I could be wrong.

blueyesue · Jul 7, 2006

It sounds like the one thing most nurses agree on is that the shortage is hospital created. (yeah, we agree on one thing). However I am very much
against unions but I would support a all nurse union ran and led by nurses
and for nurses only.

http://www.uannurse.org/

We are the United American Nurses, AFL-CIO (UAN) — the only national nurses union by and for RNs. We are 102,000 direct care nurses, active from coast to coast, in 27 affiliated state nurses associations.

dnw826 · Jul 9, 2006

Though I am not yet a nurse yet (2 years til my BSN! YAY!), I have worked in healthcare for a few years and can tell you what I've seen. At the first hospital I was an aide at, nurses (new grads) made less than working at the factories. Add in killer overtime, horrible working conditions and bad administration, and turnover was very very high. Plus us aides did most of the work while the 9/10 of the nurses only touched a patient once a night. They have been taking "nurse" duties away from nurses more and more. We did the phlebotomy, ekg, bladder scans, bathing, and all direct patient care duties. The only thing we could not do was pass meds. And we usually had 20+ patients a day. Add in most of those are full care, psyh, post-op, or hospice, and burn out was SUBSTANTIAL. Most of us were along the path to get our RN and most people decided that if that's how it is, they don't want to do it. And I agree. I refuse to work in those conditions. The nurses were not even respected by the administration.

There needs to be serious administration reform, priority reform, and more caps on patient numbers per nurse/aide.

Not to mention how hard it is to get into nursing school, like many have said. I have incredible grades, a dozen education awards for my work, and years of patient care experience and an array of medical classes I have taken and different experiences in EMT, ART, and lab work. But it is so hard to get into a school. If one puts you on the waiting list from the lottery, and you move, then there are NEW prereqs that you have to keep taking and taking. I now have 100 credits from waiting so long, and I have yet to get in.

Off my soap box now.

I did work at one hospital that was incredible. It had virtually no turnover, they were nice to us, great benefits, and, well, we were treated like humans. If every hospital were like that one, there would be no nursing shortage.

Warpster · Jul 9, 2006

CoolChik4Sure wrote "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. "

Amen, sister! The problem is the JOB, not the advertising budget or even the pay. The JOB has been dictated by a bunch of ivory tower types who don't know it's heavy physical labor combined with maximum stress. They don't know it wrecks your body and takes a toll on your mental health, even under the best conditions we have now, and the best conditions are such that the ivory tower types would never consider working under them.

Patient safety has been sacrificed as the first place hospitals have ALWAYS cut costs are on the backs of nurses.

I'm out of it now, and there is no way I will go back to a job that puts my license and my health on the line every time I walk through the door. I'm done until the JOB changes. They can throw money at new nurses all they want. Until they change the JOB, they can kiss my 25 years of experience goodbye.

When most of the profession refuses to work in that profession, you have a PROBLEM. Nursing is just that profession, but hospitals are still trying to figure out how to use fewer of us to take care of more and sicker patients.

Recruitment guys need to start to do exit interviews if they want to retain nurses, to listen to why nurses are leaving and to address the issues they bring up. Until they do that, it's just window dressing and doomed to failure.

milliesmom · Jul 12, 2006

Our patient load per nurse recently increased. We were told that nurses are less productive with fewer patients. The patients see us running around in a frenzy just to stay afloat. They say, "you must be short staffed." We are forbidden to say "yes." So, what do you say? "Oh, no. I just act like an idiot who runs from room to room and doesn't have the time of day for you. I enjoy just skimming the surface and going home wondering what I could have done better had I had the time." :clown: