Everest try puts focus on nursing woes

[rodeodance]

Source: USAToday





Everest try puts focus on nursing woes
Updated 2h 51m ago |


........But Hickey will climb Everest for another important reason: This registered nurse who teaches at the University of South Carolina's College of Nursing wants to call attention to the nation's nurse shortage.

Last year, a report by the American Hospital Association showed that U.S. hospitals had 118,000 vacancies for nursing slots, and the shortage is expected to get worse.

"Nurses are overburdened with too many patients," Hickey says. Studies have shown that nurses working on understaffed hospital wards can burn out and make errors that can compromise patient care, says Judith Thompson, executive director of the South Carolina Nurses Association.

In 2001, Hickey started climbing the world's highest mountains as a personal challenge. But in 2005 he turned that quest into something bigger: Together with the University of South Carolina, he created a scholarship program to help get more students into nursing. The Summit Scholarship fund has a goal of raising $1 for every foot of altitude on Everest.


Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-03-26-everest-nursing_N.htm?csp=1

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Our health care 'system' has many problems!

[Monkeyman]

1. No matter what anybody says Nurses are the back bone of hospital care

We need them

[AnneD]

2. Our health care system is totally dysfunctional....

and the work environment toxic. I have a good job as a School Nurse now and I have been working PRN Nursing at a skilled Nursing unit for extra money. But after being overworked to the point of unsafe Nursing practices-I am considering giving that up.
When I hang these nursing shoes up in retirement-that will be it.

We have to work ridiculous 12+ hour shifts frequently without a lunch break (barely get the bathroom break), move dead weight patients with little or no help (so many Nurses leave the profession due to injury), have dangerous patient ratios (1 nurse to 6-8 or more post op patients), increasing litigious environment (when something goes wrong like poor Doc handwriting, wrong pharmacy dose, or just human error, Nurses are held accountable). Most new Nurses are lucky if they last 5 years. Now, on top of this, add a salary that hasn't kept up with inflation (for education and responsibility) and puts affordable housing out of your reach- well there you have it.

Frankly, if I had it to do over-I wouldn't choose this profession and I try to discourage those that want to go in to the profession. As much as I enjoy the patients and caring for them, it is not worth taking the beating to your body, mind and soul. Not to mention the piss poor retirement in which you can't even afford health care in the place you use to work.


Edited to add: God Bless Hickey for trying to bring attention to this. I hate to be cynical but I think climbing Everest would be easier.

[Ilsa]

3. I feel the same way.

I worry about going back to work, what injury I could face, or lawsuits. My understanding from speaking with OB nurses is that if they have insurance, they get named in the lawsuit, but not if they have no liability insurance. Crap.

And yes, there are plenty of those long shifts --too long to be safe for the patient, IMO. I wish I had done something else also.

[AnneD]

4. Please....

Don't practice without insurance, unless you want them to take all your assets (home, car, etc). Better the insurance co be sued than you. Be safe.

It is so sad to me that we can't even recommend our own job to others. I never talked ill about my job to my daughter. One day she was sick and I took her to my school and let her stay in the clinic (there are NO substitute Nurses). I asked her 'Wouldn't you like to be a Nurse one day?' to which this bright 8yo replied 'No Mom, you work too had and you aren't paid enough'. I was SHOCKED. If it is that obvious to an 8yo....:spray:

I'll be the last health care worker in my family I'm afraid.

[Ilsa]

7. I've always worked with insurance; wouldn't without it! nt

[rainbow4321]

8. We're lucky if our new nurses last til the end of orientation

We've lost 2 in the last 2 months that didn't last thru orientation. One was so bad the hospital switched her to another preceptor, choosing to blame the 1st preceptor for the poor judgement calls of the new nurse instead of admitting they made a mistake by hiring/keeping the new nurse.
That same new nurse quit on her own within weeks of being switched to the 2nd preceptor.

The hospital gets new grads to hire on by saying our unit is an ICU stepdown unit..then they get there, work for a few months, and realize that it is a nursing home and a floor with chronic illnesses, heavy/unresponsive/confused patients, and we have no staff. IF they last thru orienation, they will work long enough to where they don't have to payback their hire on bonus (usually a year), and they are OUTTA there.

Our 250 bed hospital was ****30 nurses**** short one night. IF you are lucky enough to where your floor is properly staffed, the brass pulls your nurses elsewhere, justifying it by saying that they are trying to make all the units "equally" short staffed. So if we become 2 nurses short, they try to make us feel better by saying "well the other floors are each THREE short".

I refuse to work extra shifts anymore..I do my 3 twelve hr shifts/week and don't answer the phone the rest of the week!

[AnneD]

9. I do PRN at a skilled unit at the hospital...

post surgery, pre OT PT. We are a way station of sorts. I don't do afternoons or nights because they don't call me in enough to keep the skills up (a Nurse wanting to work but not enough hours).

Now, it there is such a shortage of Nurses, and there are such long waiting lists, and if the law of supply and demand are true.....why are they closing Nursing Schools. I don't buy that crap about no instructors for a minute because I know many a Nurse that can't handle bedside but would do teaching. Why are they not doing teaching???? The salary for a Nursing instructor is an embarrassment. In fact, I'd go further and say that Nursing is won of the few professions where education is not rewarded to the same degree as it is in other professions and the laws of supply and demand do not apply.

I remember when the N.O.W. did a job/salary comparison to men's jobs and women's jobs. The education and skills required of a Nurse were equated to an engineer. I would say that is spot on. But compare a Nursing salary with that of ANY engineer and it is woefully short. And if you can't get a decent salary, you won't attract bright minds. I took the same physics, chemistry, micro, and anatomy and physiology classes as the premeds and made good grades. Yet because I preferred the care side of medicine-my return on investment is incredibly low. I think if I had to do it over (speaking as a Boomer)I would go into engineering or be a CPA or some financial aspect of business. In fact that is my goal for my retirement gig-financial planning-esp for Nurses and other medical folks.

I think I will be out of this profession in 3-5 years. I will not look back and no amount of money will entice me back. I am blessed that I have not suffered the physical injuries that have claimed some of my friends-but I will get while the getting is good.

[Javaman]

5. I just hope he picks up his trash like so many new climbers don't do....

since the "climbing boom" of Everest, mountains of trash have been left be hide by many of the "new" climbing elite.

I don't begrudge anyone from attempting the climb, just train properly, don't be a burden on your guides and pick up your trash.

And most of all, don't be stupid. Don't "go for it" when you are exhausted and low on supplies.

[rainbow4321]

6. Can't get new nurses when the US nursing schools have no instructors

No instructors = no classes.

As a nurse I can tell you that those of us in nursing, the ones who are considered "old timers" on our units, are getting extremely burnt out. The hospital tells us that no experienced nurses are applying anymore.

Between never having enough nurses, dealing with management who insist on babying the newer nurses (old timers getting larger, heavier assignments), and a patient population that is getting sicker and sicker, we are TIRED and dicouraged. Even the not so new nurses are being called (publically) slow by management and it isused as an excuse to further dump on the oldtimers.

Ever hear of a hospital getting "Magnet status"--where a hospital tries to claim it attracts and retains nurses? Don't believe it..the "status" doesn't mean shit. Our hospital applied for it, got it, and still were/is losing nurses left and right, they are leaving in multiples of 3, 4, 5 at a time. We've decided someone got a hefty bribe over our getting magnet status. The joke amongst us all right now is "boy, that magnet status is really working for us, huh?".


The solution of many hospitals: recruit from overseas, get nurses who agree to be paid less, and now, reportedly, are cheating on the nursing exams to get to work here in the US.


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/washington/jlanders/stories/012307dnbusNurses.1caaf63.html

Many Texas hospitals would be glad to have him. There are 28,000 job openings for nurses in the state. Texas colleges and universities are graduating just 6,000 nurses a year. By 2010, the federal government estimates, Texas will have a shortfall of almost 42,000 nurses. The nationwide shortage is expected to be 10 times as large.

What may be good for Mr. Mangalindan and Texas hospitals is also a window into the broken labor markets of the United States and the Philippines.

Worldwide demand for Filipino nurses is so high that it's starting to deplete that country's hospitals, banks and courtrooms as professionals such Mr. Mangalindan go back to school to become nurses and emigrate. The number of nursing schools has doubled in five years to 420.

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Cheating chills Filipino schools
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/jlanders/stories/012307dnbusLander.1cbf2e4.html

So many Filipinos want to work abroad and demand for them around the world is so great that nursing schools have been opening at a feverish pace.

There were 420 nursing schools in the country as of early December, up from 370 at the start of 2005. In 1970, this nation had 140 nursing schools.

Now, a cheating scandal threatens to tarnish the value of Philippine nursing degrees and has led to calls for a crackdown on diploma mills.

Last June, about 42,000 graduates took the Philippine national nursing exam, and 17,000 passed. But the test answers were floating among several hundred students via mobile phone text messages and the Internet.