We Know the Real Cause of the Crisis in Our Hospitals. It's Greed.

[PatSeg]

We’re entering our third year of Covid, and America’s nurses — who we celebrated as heroes during the early days of lockdown — are now leaving the bedside. The pandemic arrived with many people having great hope for reform on many fronts, including the nursing industry, but much of that optimism seems to have faded.

In the Opinion Video above, nurses set the record straight about the root cause of the nursing crisis: chronic understaffing by profit-driven hospitals that predates the pandemic. “I could no longer work in critical care under the conditions I was being forced to work under with poor staffing,” explains one nurse, “and that’s when I left.” They also tear down the common misconception that there’s a shortage of nurses. In fact, there are more qualified nurses today in America than ever before.

To keep patients safe and protect our health care workers, lawmakers could regulate nurse-patient ratios, which California put in place in 2004, with positive results. Similar legislation was proposed and defeated in Massachusetts several years ago (with help from a $25 million “no” campaign funded by the hospital lobby), but it is currently on the table in Illinois and Pennsylvania. These laws could save patient lives and create a more just work environment for a vulnerable generation of nurses, the ones we pledged to honor and protect at the start of the pandemic.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/opinion/covid-nurse-burnout-understaffing.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20220119&instance_id=50673&nl=opinion-today®i_id=144275770&segment_id=80086&te=1&user_id=9300c9e86795a856411ac8bf084cff8b

Very unsettling video at the link

[AllyCat]

1. It took 2 years of a pandemic and nurses leaving in droves

For my hospital to finally offer some kind of incentive pay. Most of the time, though, they cancel us do they don’t have to pay it.

[Midnight Writer]

2. Exactly. You would think hospitals would expand and open new locations to meet demand.

However, that would cut into profits. Can't have that.

So now rural hospitals are closing in the name of consolidation and patients may live 50 miles or more from the nearest facility.

It is insane to let corporations handle our health care.

[PatSeg]

5. Yes, it really is

and no other developed country has healthcare like this. Healthcare is a needed service, not a commodity.

Apparently the pandemic has served to reveal a very real problem that has existed for years.

[appalachiablue]

14. ++

[mitch96]

3. Yes, what hospital coopeations are really complaining about is there is a lack of

High quality RN's willing to work for low wages. Bump the saleries up 20 or 30k/year and the shortage might just be over with. YMMV
m

[PatSeg]

7. And the nurses primary complaint

wasn't about salaries. It was about the untenable nurse to patient ratio. They feel they cannot give their patients proper care and that lives could be lost because of it. Then they are the ones who have to live with the death of a patient, a death that often was avoidable. The emotional and psychological stress can be debilitating.

[mitch96]

10. "untenable nurse to patient ratio" I have been hearing that for years. More money hopefully

will attract more people into the field.. I know many nurses who went into the field to just become Hospital managers with no patient contact.. A "clean" job as the see it..
Hospital cooperations (like the one tricky ricky scott ran) start with the perfect premise..
Slavery.. Lots of work for no pay.. they work UP from there.
Lots of work for little pay
Lots of work for a little bit more pay
bitch about strikes..... "we have no money to pay you"
They finally pay but a meager increase..
Better nurses for a little bit more money
and so on...YMMV
m

[CrispyQ]

4. The video is great.

We need to distill it down to several 15-30 second commercials.

[PatSeg]

8. I agree, it is a very powerful ad

[cbabe]

6. 2020 strike and lockout at Swedish Hospital, Seattle, owned by

Catholic Church.

Nurses working with expired contract asking for better staff/patient ratio and pay increase.

Gov. Inslee tried to help negotiations when management was unresponsive.

Heads up: 40% of hospital beds in WA are owned/controlled by Catholic Church. Medical decisions controlled by local bishop. Especially worrying when Catholic doctrine hits against women’s health and end of life care.

[PatSeg]

9. Yes, that is very disturbing

I wouldn't want a bishop determining my healthcare anymore than a for-profit corporation or an insurance company.

[leftstreet]

11. DURec

[crickets]

12. K&R for visibility.

[Nictuku]

13. Darn pay wall

[PatSeg]

15. I know, I'm sorry

There was no more to the actual article, but there was the video.

[Dirty Socialist]

16. Greed? In America?

No frickin’ way! /sarc

[PatSeg]

17. Tis the American way unfortunately