Yeah, that's right, it's my fault.

Nurses General Nursing

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Last evening I was informed by a patient that the high cost of health care can be blamed on nurses and their high compensation and benefit cost. This is a afluent, well educated person in his late 70s. For past ten years he has been heavy user of health care due to a series of medical problems. He has had the most advanced medical care in the world, the best medical care money can buy. Indeed, I believe that he has had the best of everything all of his life. I am willing to bet it has cost millions of dollars to keep him alive here in his later years. But that has nothing to with the cost of health care and health insurance does it. It is me who at the end of my career, after years of being severly underpaid and over worked, who is now finally making a pretty good wage who is responsible for the high cost of health care. To bad I couldn't say what I was really thinking because it was a patient. However, if someone out on the street makes a comment like that they are going to be sorry they every met me.

Specializes in Ante-Intra-Postpartum, Post Gyne.

This is what I thought when I read this post.

Okay, the nurse makes about $23 and hour, and I am sure if you work in OB you know how hard one has to work, and not on just one patient. The doctor is no where to be seen until the baby starts to crown, when he runs in, delivers the baby and is gone again in about twenty minuets but makes several $1,000 for his 45Min stunt....and it is the nurse that is hiking the cost of health care?

How about the low income/ no insurance woman that comes in regularly for injections for her headache and other various things that can be taken care of at a doctors office for much less, but you can not turn her away and she never pays her bill....and there are hundreds like her every month...

Or how about this: A patient came in with abdominal pains saying that his insurance would not pay for his prevacid and that cost $140.00 a month so he can not afford to pay for it. Yet, drug reps drive around in $30,000 cars that their company bought, take the entire office out to lunch and goes golfing with the doctors...I was complaining the other day because Prevacid keeps sending us free samples, so many that I do not have anywhere to but them! I turned around and gave this patient (witht the abdominal pain) 90 free samples (saving him $420)....if they are going to contribute to the cost of medication by sending countless amounts of free medication to our office, I am going to give them away free to as many patients that need them...

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Specializes in Peds ER.
Last evening I was informed by a patient that the high cost of health care can be blamed on nurses and their high compensation and benefit cost.

One very ignorant, very mis-informed individual in a specific isolated situation.

We have no idea of the context of his statement, his state of mind, his experience, or even the intent of the statement. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he's right. Quite the contrary. I'm saying get a big old grain of salt out and take it with what he said.

Let's be honest, the older we get, the more opinionated we get, and quite frequently those opinions often have no basis in reality or rational thought. Additionally, it is entirely possible the only reason he said it was not because that's what he thought, but because he wanted to irritate the OP. It would not be the first time someone bored, annoyed, scared, etc acted out in a negative way to try and entertain themselves, or to gain attention.

Just as the issue is truly not traceable to nurse salaries, nor is it truly traceable to any one other source -- malpractice suits are high so insurance is up, drug companies make too much money, doctors make too much money, emergency rooms are full of people who can't get insurance, no body wants to take care of themselves, people are getting rich on medical technology. No single thing can be attributed to the rise in healthcare cost.

But I think one concept that escapes someone with a mindset like or venerable gentleman, is that as the level of care increases, ie, how sophisticated -- what we can "do," two things happen: the cost for that care increases exponentially; and the expectation for care increases exponentially while the expectation of expense only increases geometrically.

I do believe that this is what our society is experiencing today. Some of the cost increase is due to those reasons listed in the last paragraph, but some just the simple fact that healthcare is expensive and our expectations of what medicine can do for us is increasing. It's a cycle. Got no answers for ya, just observing what I think is happening.

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Specializes in Clinical Research, Outpt Women's Health.

Was he by chance a retired hospital CEO?

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Last evening I was informed by a patient that the high cost of health care can be blamed on nurses and their high compensation and benefit cost. This is a afluent, well educated person in his late 70s. For past ten years he has been heavy user of health care due to a series of medical problems. He has had the most advanced medical care in the world, the best medical care money can buy. Indeed, I believe that he has had the best of everything all of his life. I am willing to bet it has cost millions of dollars to keep him alive here in his later years. But that has nothing to with the cost of health care and health insurance does it. It is me who at the end of my career, after years of being severly underpaid and over worked, who is now finally making a pretty good wage who is responsible for the high cost of health care. To bad I couldn't say what I was really thinking because it was a patient. However, if someone out on the street makes a comment like that they are going to be sorry they every met me.

Oramar, all I can say is that money and formal education do not necessarily equal intellligence. As nurse, we perform a vital service to society to maintain, restore, and safeguard the physical and mental health of our patients. Selfishness and meaness is rampant among the society in which we live. Many seem to externalize the source of problems and view their own needs with tunnel vision as being priority one at all times. This is not isolated to one sort of patient poulation. I have seen many selfish elderly and many selfish young patients. Gratitude is not part of their vocabulary. Yes, he would make me mad too. He is an idiot to be sure. I do think MOST people respect their nurses. It is just those rotten apples who realy get us down. For what it is worth, Oramar, I appreciate you and your many years of dedication and experienceas a nurse. I am sure many people, including this thankless old geeze, have been better off for having encountered you. Nurse shouldn't ever apologize for decent compensation. There are many people who wouldn't and couldn't do our job for a six figure salary.:angryfire

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I nearly lost my mind over comments like this when I last lived in BC for our contract negotiations. You would not believe the number of people who would say incredibly stupid things about how nurses don't deserve to be making as much money as they do... The last straw for me was a woman at a gas station as I filled up my car after an OT shift. She accused me of abandoning my patients (we didn't) by being on strike (we weren't) just because I was greedy and wanted more money. I "educated" her and applied for some jobs out of province that morning before I went to sleep. I moved a few months later and haven't regretted it for a second. Fortunately in Ontario, the public finally seemed to get it when we had the SARS outbreak in Toronto. My birth mother's husband was shocked to find out how much more money he made, when I was the one who had to go into the hospital during an outbreak of a deadly disease that we hardly knew anything about.

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Specializes in ICF/MR, ER.
Prevacid keeps sending us free samples, so many that I do not have anywhere to but them! I turned around and gave this patient (witht the abdominal pain) 90 free samples....if they are going to contribute to the cost of medication by sending countless amounts of free medication to patients, I am going to give them away free to as many patients that need them.

I would do exactly the same thing. :nurse:

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it's not only the general public who don't understand health costs and our salaries. i had a resident ask me about nursing shifts and whatnot. he asked me if because we work 12 hour shifts but are actually her for 12.5 does that mean that patients are actually charged for 25 hours of nursing care. i laughed and told him we were part of the room charge. he was amazed that it didn't matter how much care a patient needed (in icu) they all got charged the same "rate".

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Specializes in Burn/Trauma PCU.
last evening i was informed by a patient that the high cost of health care can be blamed on nurses and their high compensation and benefit cost.

what a moron. does he not know what nurses make... and how very few of them there are these days (compared to the number actually needed)? good lordy. i'm surprised he didn't ask for your w-2. :uhoh3:

still - and not to defend anything he said, because it was all crappy b.s. - people who are in a lot of pain or are miserable people tend to say ignorant, mean, or just plain irrational statements like that. not all of them, but some do, and i'm guessing this guy isn't the happiest chappy on the block, you know? oh well. a little education still would have done him some good on the topic of healthcare!

:rolleyes:

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I still maintain my theory that the world will have righted itself when teachers and nurses make the salaries of professional ball players.

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Why doesn't anybody complain about the doctors' salaries? I'm not trying to divert the blame, just wondering why we get the blame and they don't. Yeesh, I know that they're being paid to get sued and to be on call, but why blame the ones who get little assistance and less respect?

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.
Why doesn't anybody complain about the doctors' salaries?

I used to think this, till i found out how much a few of our surgeons actually make.

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Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

Dr's don't necessarily make all that much, in comparision to the time they spend in the office, on call and at the hospital.

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