Well, At Least They Tell You Up Front

caliotter3 · Mar 7, 2020

And to think in many jurisdictions minimum wage is moving to $15 an hour or even more.

Katillac, RN · Mar 7, 2020

35 minutes ago, caliotter3 said:
And to think in many jurisdictions minimum wage is moving to $15 an hour or even more.

Yup! And when you think about it, dialysis nurses in an acute setting are typically sole practitioners in that there's nobody else immediately available that knows the specialty. So if something goes Dixie, you're it.

As a future potential services consumer, it's good to know the person with my kidneys completely in their hands may be paid less than housekeeping, no insult to environmental services intended.

Nunya, BSN · Mar 8, 2020

And you may train somewhere other than your home clinic, or have to go to other hospitals... Training for dialysis as I understand it is months. So for months you may have to drive way farther than you really want to? Or go to a hospital an hour+from home, after working a "long day" without notice? Yeah, no thanks.

KatieMI, BSN, MSN, RN · Mar 8, 2020

1 hour ago, Elaine M said:
And you may train somewhere other than your home clinic, or have to go to other hospitals... Training for dialysis as I understand it is months. So for months you may have to drive way farther than you really want to? Or go to a hospital an hour+from home, after working a "long day" without notice? Yeah, no thanks.

Yeah. Acute HD nurses I spoke with told exactly the same story: they can call you any time during the shift and order to go somewhere in the heck of the woods to do another run in some critical access hospital or even SNF (roughly, about 4 hours plus commute) after you are done. If the shift thus stretched to 20 hours, it was not counted as overtime and tomorrow they were expected to be ready for the same.

Telling the truth, I saw more than just one of them doing acute HD while they were in school because after they got things running, the time, with some luck, was calm and they could quietly do homework. One guy somehow was working like that part-time while being in pre-med. I envied them as I was in school too but was inevitably running like a chicken with its head just cut off for 12 hours straight.

We can probably open "most ridiculous job ad" topic somewhere here. I recently got a very insistent call from a recruiter who wanted DNP or PhD (either one mandatory) prepared NP to do "emotional health assessments" and write OK notes for need in "emotional support animal" for $50 a piece at client's home without mileage compensation. And Rural Physicians group is into their third year to fill "impactful, rewarding" position of a Hospitalist NP to cover Third-World level critical access facility in the very middle of a rural health care desert for 7 24-h periods in a row, without right to leave the premices and no backup or support whatsoever for salary just scratching regional baseline. No need to move, and pay for using call room is off.

gcupid · Mar 8, 2020

that's horrible pay! It should be at least $37 an hour starting.

Jedrnurse, BSN, RN · Mar 8, 2020

It's true that the company is 'telling you up front'.

Unfortunately, some sucker will take the job, thus enabling the company to continue their practices.

AND, there will be an AN complaint post sometime in the future from a nurse complaining about "anxiety/stress/depression" (heck, let's add bullying and NETY for good luck) because of their horrible dialysis job...

marienm, RN, CCRN · Mar 8, 2020

I live in the area and new grads in the hospitals here start around $24/hour right now. There are 3 major hospitals so each has different benefits, but if this comany expects any prior experience with dialysis, or nursing, I agree that $17 seems low. The cost of living here isn't too bad, but it's weirdly upside down: If you are renting a decent apartment, your rent is probably 1.5 to 3 times more than a typical mortgage payment here.

rzyzzy · Mar 9, 2020

This field (dialysis) is experiencing some weird side-effects of duopoly domination & capitalism running wild.

https://www.axios.com/health-care-costs-monopolies-competition-hospitals-9839f396-c95d-4792-b106-663a727ef1f4.html

92% of US dialysis is done by two companies, one of whom recently plead guilty to criminal bribery charges - cash payoffs, deleted emails - actual “Tony Soprano” style behavior..

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fresenius-care-justice-corruption/fresenius-medical-care-to-pay-231-million-to-resolve-criminal-civil-foreign-bribery-charges-idUSKCN1RA1X7

They’re also both playing shenanigans with “charities” whereby they each “donate” funds for uninsured patients and in return, they get to bill the insurance companies at higher rates than they could normally bill for uninsured patients..

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/jim-chanos-says-hes-short-kidney-dialysis-company-davita.html

it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that the actual /thugs/ at the top of the food chains of both companies cannot keep their hands out of their employees pockets either - understaffing, underpaying, union-busting..

The truly terrifying thing about dialysis being under the duopoly-control of these two particular corporations is that one of them isn’t even a US corporation - when they inevitably go rouge and hold the lives of CKD patients “hostage”, how is anyone supposed to hold them accountable?

This day is coming - the intersection of the perversion of capitalism and “socialist” medical care. Capitalism is based on a theory of equals negotiating in good faith, and when the “good faith” isn’t actually there - you’re left with half a million people currently in need of dialysis (most of whom will be dead in a couple of weeks if service isn’t available)..

The employees getting screwed is probably the easiest part to stomach from a human perspective.

turtlesRcool · Mar 10, 2020

The telling you upfront is probably to weed out anyone who would go into it expecting better working conditions and then quit.

They are looking for desperate nurses to fill this job. They want the nurse who is an old-new-grad who might see this as a gateway to acute care. They want the nurse in recovery who can't take a job with access to controlled substances. They want the nurse who was fired from another organization, but isn't able to move to a better location to start over.

It's like those African royalty scam emails. They are purposely unbelievable. If they were just a little more credible, more people would respond to them, and the scammers would waste a lot of time on people who would realize the scam and not fall for it. By making the letters SO bad, they weed out most readers, and are left with only the most naive or stupid people contacting them, which is their target audience.

JKL33 · Mar 10, 2020

^ Now then what is truly depressing is the number of organizations with good reps who aren't as obvious but still have the telltale signs of a similar philosophy. Even the "best-of-the-best" HC corps that dominate some regions unabashedly post every position as being rotating everything, for example. Rotating campuses, shifts, days, weekends, holidays. Also their job descriptions have become either so minimal as to be useless or so inclusive of broad categories of responsibility as to essentially be non-descript. They should just write, "Need someone with a BSN to be responsible for everything whenever and wherever we tell you to. Your concerns about pay are not important."