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> I know a lot of nurses. They make decent (not outrageous) money, but their work environment is frequently a shitshow. Many are quitting. You're conflating re

> I know a lot of nurses. They make decent (not outrageous) money, but their work environment is frequently a shitshow. Many are quitting. You're conflating recent and broad economic trends with the specific conditions of a specific profession. Millions of Americans all over the country have been quitting and changing careers (it even has a name: "the Great Resignation"). This doesn't mean their conditions are shit, but rather that pandemic-era economic forces have been reshuffling our economy.

tomca32 4y ago
My fiancee is a nurse. Conditions are absolute shit, especially in states where the patient to nurse ratio isn't legally protected. I think that the Great Resignation is even more obvious in nursing because of nursing contracts. Nurse contracting became really popular when the pandemic started because the hospitals were overwhelmed and contracts were ridiculously lucrative. Hospital management is always so short sighted that they just don't want to raise the pay of their core stuff. Core staff is paid on average $35/hour. Nursing contracts start at $60 and can go much higher. This has lead to the situation where the core staff resigns en masse and goes to work as a contractor (sometimes even at the same hospital). The hospital where my fiancee is contracting now has literally 0 core nursing staff left. There is not a single full time nurse employed in the whole hospital. Problem is that the contractors leave after ~3 months and go look for a more high paying contract so they are rarely at the same hospital for a long time. The result is that you don't have a single nurse in the hospital that actually knows that hospital's procedures, doctors, people to call, storage lockers, and all of that institutional knowledge that you need to have to be effective.
adhesive_wombat 4y ago
Nurses are treated like complete shit and work in dreadful conditions in the UK too (public and private), and that certainly predates the pandemic.
- tcmart14 4y ago
  Thank you. I see so much that people conflate some issues has having been a direct result of the pandemic. Its like, nope, the pandemic just made the problem surface, but the problem has been there for a lot longer. With nursing, it is keeping the nurses understaffed and hiring travel nurses when they are suddenly backed into a corner. Many hospital systems have been under-staffing nurses for years, it just didn't become apparent until the pandemic. The nurses at my local hospital went on strike a year BEFORE COVID over this exact issue.
HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
What he's describing is by no means a recent trend!

tomca32 4y ago

My fiancee is a nurse. Conditions are absolute shit, especially in states where the patient to nurse ratio isn't legally protected. I think that the Great Resignation is even more obvious in nursing because of nursing contracts. Nurse contracting became really popular when the pandemic started because the hospitals were overwhelmed and contracts were ridiculously lucrative. Hospital management is always so short sighted that they just don't want to raise the pay of their core stuff. Core staff is paid on average $35/hour. Nursing contracts start at $60 and can go much higher. This has lead to the situation where the core staff resigns en masse and goes to work as a contractor (sometimes even at the same hospital). The hospital where my fiancee is contracting now has literally 0 core nursing staff left. There is not a single full time nurse employed in the whole hospital. Problem is that the contractors leave after ~3 months and go look for a more high paying contract so they are rarely at the same hospital for a long time. The result is that you don't have a single nurse in the hospital that actually knows that hospital's procedures, doctors, people to call, storage lockers, and all of that institutional knowledge that you need to have to be effective.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago

Nurses are treated like complete shit and work in dreadful conditions in the UK too (public and private), and that certainly predates the pandemic.

tcmart14 4y ago
Thank you. I see so much that people conflate some issues has having been a direct result of the pandemic. Its like, nope, the pandemic just made the problem surface, but the problem has been there for a lot longer. With nursing, it is keeping the nurses understaffed and hiring travel nurses when they are suddenly backed into a corner. Many hospital systems have been under-staffing nurses for years, it just didn't become apparent until the pandemic. The nurses at my local hospital went on strike a year BEFORE COVID over this exact issue.

HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago

What he's describing is by no means a recent trend!