I just wanted to tell all you fellas that you do not want to end up in the ER or hospital right now. It is pretty brutal. Please see your doctors regularly so you don't end up having to come in. There is nobody left that wants to do the work anymore. The hospitals in my area used to have a steady flow of new graduate nurses that would fill staff positions, plus EMTs or CNAs that would take entry level jobs to get their foot in the door. Those roles are pretty much non existent at this point. I figure that instead of taking jobs like those, those same people are DoorDashing, or Ubering because they can make decent money, and they have minimal responsibility. The average wait times around here are 7 hours to even get back to a room. Some ERs will have half of the room shut down, just because there isn't enough staff. It's actually really dangerous at this point. The same amount of work needs to be done, but there's half as many people that are willing to do it.
The ones that are there get more and more work piled on them too, often times underpaid and with garbage insurance.... dont get me started, its bullshit for sure. Its no wonder that profession isnt drawing new people when you abuse the ones you do have. Maybe if they paid better and had decent insurance they could attract good workers, just a thought. There is also the trend of traveling nurses who get paid very well and have no obligation of duty to whatever facility they happen to be working at that day. Because of the high cost of the agency nurses the facility cant afford to pay their regular nurses better and still stay in the black. They try to force more work on the regulars to cut back on the agency cost but that just pisses the girls off and potentially drives them to apply for an agency job or door dash or whatever so they can get paid better and/or have less responsibility. Its a vicious cycle that is very bad for the facility, nurses, and patients alike. Seriously guys! Treat/pay your regular nurses better so you can get away from agency, attract new qualified, caring, hard working nurses, and increase the quality of your care to the patients, its seems pretty straight forward to me.
Yep that's the name of the game. These hospitals were rolling in a ton of money during COVID and still treating their nurses like garbage. I work for a third party company now, I'm like a traveler, but I make my own schedule too. I tried the staff nurse thing, but it just wasn't worth it. I made half to a third of what I'm making now, and $800 for health insurance for a family of three so my check was a complete joke by the time it came. Also we delivered my second son at the actual hospital that I worked at and still paid 3-4k out of pocket, on top of the 10k per year in premiums. They are really going to have to step up the pay and benefits if they want to suck us back into full time jobs, because it just isn't worth it. In all of the ERs that I work in, half of us are third party employees.
That’s a description of Canadian Healthcare for 20 plus years.
10 ambulances sitting at the ER waiting to offload.
For the 2nd time in recent months we had another person die in the ER waiting room waiting for care in my local health authority.
My wife is an ICU nurse and just transitioned from a staff position to instead be on contract and per diem. Making way more now this way and it’s not much to add her and the kids to my insurance plan from my job.
I can foresee something major needing to happen to get more healthcare workers, like some sort of subsidized education if they pass and stay working in the industry for 5 or 10 years.
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They are doing that with Doctors in Canada.
We follow a couple traveling nurses on youtube that go there in a RV with their family. Going all the way up to Alaska during covid was crazy! Seems a LOT of them quit after going through the covid outbreak. Did the work at crazy long hours at risk of catching it with little support for what they all had done to great lengths.
My mother was a RN LPN and surgical assistant
Thankful my wife is a nurse..cha ching…
My oldest daughter is 6 months away from graduating with a nursing degree- she will be 20. She is working now as a CNA and they are paying her tuition..Her BF is going through an Electrician apprenticeship. They will have it made ..
Nice, it is pretty lucrative right now, but your daughter is going to run her ass off. It's good that she is already getting CNA experience. Half of the new grads don't last more than six months in the ER.
You probably don't want your daughter to leave, but she might hit the road for traveling once she gets a year of experience. The electrician boyfriend might keep her in town though. The best strategy is to figure out which hospital system is paying their agency workers the most and then work part time at another hospital system, if she has that option.
Somewhat off topic but I saw an advertisement in a newspaper for a county mental health delegate the other day.. it requires a masters degree and two years of experience. The pay was $16 an hour.
while in line at Dunkin Donuts I saw a sign saying their starting pay is $18 an hour. It’s a fucked up world.
I saw a sign at Chick-fil-A in Bend OR that was offering $21/hr to start and they would pay for your tuitions. Sign of the times.
I used to make way above average in my line of work and the entry level shit is creeping up at an alarming rate. Makes you realize your worth.
Ya, that's nuts.
My sister in law has been a nurse for 9 months now and makes 39 and change an hour ,that pretty good for this part of the country.
Ya, now 6 nuggets and a fry cost 11 dollars at mcdonalds because they raised their wages , crazy.
In ca, a full time RN is making at least $150k a year.
I don't understand why they don't open more nursing schools. The programs aren't overly hard, but it's a multi year lottery in some areas to get in.
I agree with you, i'm a full time paramedic in CA, looking to go to nursing school. It is so difficult and expensive. Ohio actually offers a paramedic to RN program that is cheap and I am looking into it. I am tired of working 200hrs pay periods on the ambulance due to mandated over time!
How many said "fuck it", and quit because they wouldn't get the jab? I know a handful of nurses/doctors on a personal level, and every one of them hates it. Half of the ones I know only took the jab so they could keep their jobs.
Judging by the shortage we have...a lot.
I know 2 girls that quit the profession because of the jab mandate and the public backlash over those that didnt want to take it. That policy seems to be working out quite well.
We had a pair of traveling nurses apply to rent our condo in SoCal. They were each making $20k per month.
I figured that played a big part in it too. They were pretty lenient at my employer at the time whenever the mandates came out. You could get a religious or medical exemption pretty easily. But I bet the majority of those hospitals were stricter. So I'm sure a lot of them went to smaller organizations, like surgery centers, or independent practices, where they aren't going to have a big corporation that makes most of their money for Medicaid and Medicare telling them what to do with their bodies.
Pit Row
The waitlist have gotten a lot shorter. I waited two years to get in to school. And I've heard you can get in a lot quicker nowadays. I was making 25/hour for night shift then. I am making way more that now. I think it's a supply and demand issue, there really aren't that many people left that are willing to do it, so they are paying big bucks. I wouldn't be surprised if the federal government got involved to restrict our freedoms a little bit, so that hospitals could take more advantage of us. Because almost everybody is independent, working for a third party company around me, at least in the ER
2 nursing students one dental student and one RN on my hockey team…
Is that by design for potential and inevitable injuries sustained by your team? If not, it’s certainly convenient.
I went to watch a fight one time and a hockey game broke out.😃
Didn’t nurses get a big increase for working during c19 ? Still hv to wear a mask to enter a clinic is ridiculous. I don’t hv many good things to say about the current nurses. I wasted 30k plus 10k from a 12k loan everything I had. on there bs for a back,neck and knee injury. A bunch of idiots put you meds that you can’t ovr lap. Nursing still pays a million times better than trucking. We sat 2+ days in a dock to get lded with no pay and no use of a restroom for 2 yrs of c19. Showered with rocks,bricks,etc during blm and they call nurses front line heroes. A lot of nurses are strippers to make ends meet. Lanora from pa. Had some funny stories . About a wonens face she had herpes all ovr it. I said whoa how do you get herpes all ovr your face. She said not that face her face between her legs.
My wife didnt get shit for a bonus, incentive, or pay raise and she had to work through the the pandemic. They had whole sections of the facility cordoned of with plastic sheets. She had to work in the "covid" side of it making no more than the nurses on the other side. She would dress up in what I would call a damn hazmat suit, heavy duty mask (n95 I think) and a plastic face shield. She cam home every day and stripped down to her undies on the back porch and come straight in and throw her clothes in the washer and hop in the shower. Put her shoes in a plastic bin. Me and the kids didnt go near her or her stuff till she had been cleaned. I felt like she was a frontline hero, working every day when the rest of society sat at home collecting unemployment checks (myself included). It all feels pretty silly now that we know how non threatening the whole thing was, but at the time it seemed like it had merit. And be careful blaming nurses for the cost of your care, your meds not being able to overlap and such. All of those things you mentioned are out of their control. Hell most of that is out of the Drs control too. The health care system is fucked up, but its not the nurses fault.
Most of the shortage is created by the business side of the hospital.
For the last 2 years, hospitals have been flush with covid money. This created artificial profits basically.
That's now drying up. So the only way to keep the profit levels the same is to drastically reduce staff or keep pay so low you can go get a a job paying better somewhere else. There are tons of job openings at hospitals. But the average StarBucks barista can make more an hour then a healthcare worker.
The same problem here in Latvia.
Actually, they miss allot of games…
but career before playtime…
Saw an add yesterday for a Cabinet Builder with a minimum of 5 years experience, $15-$18 per hour. Wonder why they can’t hire anybody!
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I have really enjoyed living in the house behind you for that duration of time.
Same in New Zealand as well
My wife got multiple pay increases over the past couple years, mostly because the starting pay for hospital employees kept increasing. Every time the starting hourly pay increases the upper hourly pays increase too.
For example- my wife’s been a RN for 16 years and is at the top of her pay scale. Last year, instead of a raise (initially) she got paid out a lump sum payment (this is common for folks at top of their pay scale). Then two weeks later they raised all the pay scales and so she got a raise too.
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