Nursing Shortage?
A day after an article came out in the Boston Globe claiming there was a nursing shortage in the state another article came out rebuking the original argument. Nurses wrote in to say “they have been struggling to find a job for months. In particular, they say, newly licensed nurses are having a hard time getting work”. So what gives? The authors and others give their thoughts but nothing is proven. It wasn’t mentioned but I have another hunch. Could it be that there are just less nurses being hired in hospitals so that administrators can keep their costs down? Maybe that is why experienced nurses are more in demand so that they can act as overseers of LELTS (less educated/less trained) nursing assistants?
How many extra nurses at even a small hospital could be provided for the cost of the periodic JCHAO “pre-inspection”? Again, we see the effects of Big Government in medicine.
chicken-egg and vicious cycle are two analogies that come to mind. for #1: select a hospital; pull all the ‘suits’ out; wait 6 weeks; pull in CMS/OIG/OSHA/TJC/OCR/etc. team for a ‘typical’ review for 1 full week; count the number of nurses and other standing in the unemployment line the following week, and read the local paper about how the local economy will ‘tank’ given the loss of the facility in the community. some things are just necessary evils until real change occurs. for #2: new nurse graduates; takes job on midnight shift wherever there is one open near her home; survives until a ‘day’ job comes open outside the hosptial walls with fewer demands and less responsibility so that she can have a life of her own; leaves nursing when the cost of day care for her kids outweighs her salary; vacancy left. either way, the patient loses. and that patient will one day be us!
In your statement “Could it be that there are just less nurses being hired in hospitals so that administrators can keep their costs down?”, is “less” a reflection of quality and did you mean to write “fewer”?
There is a shortage of mindless minions.
Active “pressure” is placed on any nurse with more than ten years experience. It is the illusion of experience and intelligent staff (all staff in all clinical areas) that is sought after, not the real deal. There is no amount of paperwork and forms that will ever conceal the truth and the false economy.
Administrators appear to be either totally clueless or scared silly by the boards for their own jobs.
I have never found the suits to be useful and I think there may be a day that the suits may be the only ones left in the hospital. May the deity of your choice help us all if there is a code.
Doug, you got this one exactly right. And what are the doctors doing about it? Exactly nothing.
Why not? Hire less nurses so they can spawn jobs for more administrators? I’ve never seen so many administrative types running around before in my 30 years. The graph you previously post I’m afraid is true.