I was surprised to learn that 80% of nurses in the US are not unionized. In California, union membership is compulsory and nurses often strike for better pay and working conditions. I think the...
I was surprised to learn that 80% of nurses in the US are not unionized. In California, union membership is compulsory and nurses often strike for better pay and working conditions. I think the real message here is that nurses need to unionize nationwide.
Nurses don't have to suffer these kinds of conditions at work. They can look to the quality of nursing jobs in California to see that unionizing will prevent these issues.
Having people constantly learning the idiosyncracies of various hospital departments is not ideal for care. There is no standardization of where emergency equipment is stored for example. Training...
Having people constantly learning the idiosyncracies of various hospital departments is not ideal for care. There is no standardization of where emergency equipment is stored for example. Training a travel nurse is a drain on staff time.
Also, if it is truly more expensive than full time staff, how does that pencil out budget wise?
It doesn’t. But that’s the nature of labor negotiations. If employees are to be paid more, the budget has to go up, one way or the other. In the end, this will result in higher costs for patients,...
It doesn’t. But that’s the nature of labor negotiations. If employees are to be paid more, the budget has to go up, one way or the other.
In the end, this will result in higher costs for patients, too.
Though, another way to do it would be to make it a nicer job somehow, with fewer problems to deal with and more respect, so they don’t end up wanting what’s basically hazard pay. There’s often a lot management could do, but in the end, when the public becomes more hostile, we all end up paying the price.
(I’m speaking generally; I don’t know anything in particular about nursing.)
I would guess that the incentives point the opposite way: hiring nurses is harder since they have better alternatives, so they should do more to retain the ones they have. But sadly, many...
I would guess that the incentives point the opposite way: hiring nurses is harder since they have better alternatives, so they should do more to retain the ones they have.
But sadly, many organizations don’t respond constructively to incentives like that, so a blunter approach to negotiation is sometimes necessary.
It ends up in a weird cycle too. They hire traveling nurses as a "temporary measure" because no one will take their shit pay for full time permanent positions or the shit treatment by management....
Exemplary
It ends up in a weird cycle too. They hire traveling nurses as a "temporary measure" because no one will take their shit pay for full time permanent positions or the shit treatment by management. Then they don't have the budget to fill the department anymore with permanent positions because they have wrecked their budget with travel nurses. But for some reason, management will approve more temporary travel nurse hires because they are only a temporary expense. At the same time, more nurses are becoming travel nurses because the pay is better and they only have to deal with dysfunctional departments for a short time before moving on. Now the nurses who can't become travel nurses are having to continually train new travel nurses while institutional knowledge is being drained and permanent positions are being stretched thinner and thinner. This leads to utilizing medical assistants or nurse assistants (or even lower credentialed individuals) in increasingly out-of-scope roles. Management doesn't mind this because a support FTE is less expensive than a nurse FTE anyway so that budget squeeze from earlier is being alleviated (so long as no one is sued!) Poor implementation and enforcement of regulations allows a lot of this to continue, so long as patient care doesn't slip too much. But you know what? Patient care is suffering, all while need is at an all time high and only increasing.
I find it hard to not just say "we're fucked" sometimes.
I was surprised to learn that 80% of nurses in the US are not unionized. In California, union membership is compulsory and nurses often strike for better pay and working conditions. I think the real message here is that nurses need to unionize nationwide.
Nurses don't have to suffer these kinds of conditions at work. They can look to the quality of nursing jobs in California to see that unionizing will prevent these issues.
I think some nurses handle this by becoming traveling nurses, which pays a lot better? There were stories about this during the pandemic.
Having people constantly learning the idiosyncracies of various hospital departments is not ideal for care. There is no standardization of where emergency equipment is stored for example. Training a travel nurse is a drain on staff time.
Also, if it is truly more expensive than full time staff, how does that pencil out budget wise?
It doesn’t. But that’s the nature of labor negotiations. If employees are to be paid more, the budget has to go up, one way or the other.
In the end, this will result in higher costs for patients, too.
Though, another way to do it would be to make it a nicer job somehow, with fewer problems to deal with and more respect, so they don’t end up wanting what’s basically hazard pay. There’s often a lot management could do, but in the end, when the public becomes more hostile, we all end up paying the price.
(I’m speaking generally; I don’t know anything in particular about nursing.)
It's a vicious cycle because traveling nurses decrease the labor power of the non-traveling nurses, leading to even worse conditions.
I would guess that the incentives point the opposite way: hiring nurses is harder since they have better alternatives, so they should do more to retain the ones they have.
But sadly, many organizations don’t respond constructively to incentives like that, so a blunter approach to negotiation is sometimes necessary.
It ends up in a weird cycle too. They hire traveling nurses as a "temporary measure" because no one will take their shit pay for full time permanent positions or the shit treatment by management. Then they don't have the budget to fill the department anymore with permanent positions because they have wrecked their budget with travel nurses. But for some reason, management will approve more temporary travel nurse hires because they are only a temporary expense. At the same time, more nurses are becoming travel nurses because the pay is better and they only have to deal with dysfunctional departments for a short time before moving on. Now the nurses who can't become travel nurses are having to continually train new travel nurses while institutional knowledge is being drained and permanent positions are being stretched thinner and thinner. This leads to utilizing medical assistants or nurse assistants (or even lower credentialed individuals) in increasingly out-of-scope roles. Management doesn't mind this because a support FTE is less expensive than a nurse FTE anyway so that budget squeeze from earlier is being alleviated (so long as no one is sued!) Poor implementation and enforcement of regulations allows a lot of this to continue, so long as patient care doesn't slip too much. But you know what? Patient care is suffering, all while need is at an all time high and only increasing.
I find it hard to not just say "we're fucked" sometimes.