Are these really the people that should be required to work so much? Isn’t their job about handling life and death daily? Wouldn’t we want exactly these people to come fully rested to work every single day and be fully staffed?
I don’t know if there are jobs with similar stakes that are so carelessly staffed and disgustingly paid.
Most of them actually. Am a nurse and was once psychiatrically hospitalized alongside a train conductor and we really bonded over our ridiculous and yet supposedly “high reliability industry” jobs. She actually got hooked on speedballs because there’s some weird loophole in our state where the train conductors need to give something like 48–72h notice or something to take sick leave so most of them just show up for their 16h shifts fucked up on amphetamines to stay awake then benzos so the amphetamines don’t give them tachycardia and one of her managers actually basically gave her a pep talk on which doctors to go to and what to say to get them prescribed legally but given that they’re both extremely addictive substances her dosages spiraled wildly out of control extremely quickly such that she was only able to get effective doses extralegally. On the plus side though losing that job and getting shipped to the other end of the state just to find a bed got her away from both her dealer and her cartoonishly abusive ex (even a week into her stay the bruising was pretty wild).
that train disaster in '23 is telling how badly understaffed purposely the trains are in america, that companies that own these are unwilling to pay for more staff, or give any time off in short notice to people. is that a CNA job? that is not even worth the stress, might as well work for a grocery chain or walmart at that point.
This was back in 2015ish, they’re probably making ~$20/h these days but still. Yeah some people had a CNA but a lot of that job was people that were unemployable elsewhere for reasons other than straight up crime (for the most part, anyway. There were a few employees with DUIs, public intoxication, etc). I was young and had found out about the job from being hospitalized there and went back because from the care I received I figured it couldn’t be that hard to be better at that job (it wasn’t, but not by as much as I would have hoped) and, most importantly, I wanted to #HelpPeople.
The upside is that job on a psych nurse resume is basically an instant callback. I might get paid shit but as long as I’m upright and don’t have too bad of a TBI I’ll basically never be jobless. I’ve gotten callbacks within 12h of applying, one of them I didn’t even finish / submit. I also graduated early into COVID then worked straight through so my resume is just overall fucking baller. If I wasn’t too AuDHD to deal with learning a new hospital every 12 weeks I could probably make bank as a travel nurse. I really enjoyed teaching self defense and restraint classes this last year so I really just need to go back to school and get my masters.
And compared to when I was young and stupid people listen when I start telling stories so that’s been somewhat affirming. It’ll probably make an utterly wild memoir if I live about 30 more years. Hubs says he wants to take me to one of those crowd work shows because siccing me on people at parties is starting to get boring.
The better question is why are the US Labor Laws still shitty. The Scandinavian countries leave everybody in their dust trail and the USA should simply copy them. Good luck finding the politicians, uncorrupt ones, that will change the laws.
You know, healthcare jobs are the only ones I see “advertised” here in the Southwest. There are billboards for all sorts of medical careers. I’ve had friends and acquaintances talk about being a nurse as a backup career plan.
Nursing is a career path where you cannot rise to the top ranks. Nurses cannot ever rise above doctors, because the next step up is a doctor. The repeat clients in a hospital setting in the southwest are drug addicts or psych patients. The “average” person going to the hospital is going there with something severe. Not to say that everyone doesn’t deserve care, but know your patient base. Nurses are strapped in the entire shift, and being late from lunch is like being late to work. It’s incredibly stressful, and there are studies that essentially show that nurses are worked to the mental and physical limit in their lifetime.
Nurses are treated like shit, and there’s a steady stream of them leaving the profession or moving into admin positions where they’ll settle in; you’re way better off in every way to just aspire to the admin jobs with a master’s of public health. Tell your friends. You’re welcome.
How is nursing a backup? Are the requirements that low in the US (I’m assuming “Southwest” is in the US?)
Nurses don’t need much training for the lower tiers (e.g. bed pushers).
Or you can change careers and need to do training but the barrier to entry is IMO way lower than say business analyst where you need to know economy topics.
Diagnostics do doctors, medicine orders do doctors. What do nurses do that arent ordered/instructed by doctors beforehand? And what about it can’t be learned a few months in advance?ive been seeing alot OF NPs, they get higher pay and can work in somewhat as a standin for PAs/ or MDs, my last healthcare group plan had mostly NPs.(they rotate all the health professionals like paper, so there is pretty much a high turnover, but its for the benefit of the PAs/MDs or NP, since the health network was more of starting your career type and getting more experience.
I know of a relative that is officially “just a” trained nurse (with various additional qualifications).
But the kicker: Doctors come to the relative for advice.
A studied medical professional overcame their ego and asked a nurse for advice.I am working in IT with medical personal as my client. And instructing/giving advice to them is usually more like pulling teeth because they feel they are higher on the totem pole.
Some do listed to me but others…Man…
No, the requirements aren’t that low. But there are levels of nursing. Each requiring different levels of education and licensing. From LPN, Licensed Practical Nurse the entry level that takes about a year, to RN, Registered Nurse, can take 2 to 4 years. A 4 year BS degree is a degreed RN. Then you can continue to other licensing degrees like RN-P, Registered Nurse Practitioner-- with a limited doctor scope of medicine to take the pressure off of General Practitioner doctors. And a host of specialties nurses can go into. With median wages around $90,000US. And easy opportunities to earn well over $100,00US per year.
Much of the staffing issues centers around many nurses wanting to only work 20 to 25 hours a week. I have a friend that was head of a nursing department in a hospital for many years, and she was always complaining that she couldn’t get nurses to work more than 30 hours a week. And most refused to work more than 25 hours.
Nurses can abdolutely advance careers.
Either through more training to become a professional in a specific topic (or expanding to freelancing on the side) or going into a more administrative part of the hospital like schedules, ordering etc.
But medically speaking, you are right. Only as far as you can until you need to study humane medicine.Nursing can advance quite a bit. A nurse can become a nurse practitioner, for instance. NPs can even open their own practice in some places. Or get a DNP, become a doctor nurse. Sure that pushes one more towards the admin side, but that doesn’t mean it’s removed from the world of nursing either.
But I guess one could say the same about being a physician as well. Where is there to go? It’s not really about advancing positions, but just doing more stuff that gets you paid more. Whether that be research/education/administration/specializing/whatever else.
i think its because GOP constantly attack healthcare funding, or it scares away potential health employees from working in those states, thats why they dont go to the red states, plus, they are now so desperate they are willing to pay MDs and some nurses to work there some bank apparently. i dont think they care about getting promotions, if thier COL is met, in many places they are making bank from just working shifts in the region(travelling nurses). i notice obesity related clinics(surgeries, do make bank there because the south is so overweight). seems healthcare quality in the south is quite lacking in non-affluent or blue areas.
My personal take is that since doctors are all paid commensurate with the cost of housing, they can go literally anywhere they want.
I’ve noticed over the years that here in AZ, many doctors here long term are centrist politically, unless they’re working for an aid organization like the AIDS foundation or a clinic that caters to the “needy”. Those that live here, want to live here. That said, the ones that aren’t in love with AZ dip out with no warning lol. Me personally, I’d move to Cali with zero hesitation. When abortion was momentarily made illegal here a few years ago, doctors just fucking left, mine included lol.
You know what’s funny? I actually think the situation is a lot better than you’re making it out to be.
You’re not entirely wrong. There absolutely are positions in hospitals where people do insane schedules like 24 or 48 hour shifts. But that’s mostly concentrated around emergency medicine, trauma, surgical residency, ICU coverage, and certain on-call specialties. There’s definitely a culture surrounding ER staff and surgeons where sleep deprivation almost gets treated like some badge of honor.
But the majority of the medical world in America does not operate like that.
Most hospitals primarily run on normal shift structures. Nurses on regular floors and patient wings are usually working standard 8 or 12 hour rotations with multiple shift changes throughout the day just like any other industry. And once you get into private practice, some doctors are only in office a few days a week seeing a relatively small number of patients across different locations.
People also forget hospitals are not run exclusively by doctors and nurses. They’re massive operations with huge amounts of support staff, technicians, imaging departments, transport, administration, custodial staff, billing, labs, and so on, most of whom work completely normal schedules.
So yes, what you’re describing does exist. But I don’t think it’s remotely as universal or apocalyptic as people make it sound. A lot of public perception comes from dramatized media where every hospital is portrayed like a nonstop trauma center operating at DEFCON 1 twenty-four hours a day.
Of course not. People take naps when it dies down in open rooms.
No we’re not. But generally governments everywhere want to starve the medical industry to make it entirely for-profit
Glares at Doug Ford
they kinda are doing that, by UNDERSTAFFING everywhere, replacing expensive MDs for NP/ or even nurses, and PAs. PAs are useful if they can spend time with your medical history like 30min+, anything less than that they are only slighty better than NP/nurses.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s even about profit everywhere.
I obviously don’t know what it’s like in Canada, but in my country, we also have socialized healthcare (like Canada), we have a shortage of some specialty doctors because they’re expensive to train and expensive to hire, and many go to other, richer countries instead (Finland in particular, as it’s close by). But nobody works huge amounts of overtime usually. Nurses work double or triple shifts, but mostly overtime is voluntary, and the only reason they work 16 or 24 hours in a row is because of stupid traditions and the slight risk of information going missing with the shift change.
The one upside is that they get a bunch of days off after each shift since you only need 2 shifts a week, and actually get to skip one shift every now and then if you don’t want to do overtime.
Glares at Tim Houston
Tries to glare at Tim Hortons but it is not available in my region
I mean they deserve it too…
Right in the Tim bits.
ಠ_ಠ
Can I introduce you to EMS and firefighters 24 and 48 hour shifts?
I can assure you part time, seven days isn’t better.
Yeah, but that’s not constant work over that span. Most of it (and frequently all of it) is just sitting around the firehouse waiting for a call. In the meantime they can eat, sleep, watch TV, etc.
Edit: Ok, ok, there are duties that need to be done around the station so it’s not all sitting around. But it’s also not fighting fires 24 hours straight.
In an ideal world those 48 hour shifts involve zero work
On a good shift, yes, we have down time. My current job I am usually lucky and get time to sit around, but it’s not generally as relaxing as you’d think because at any time I need to be up and out the door within 90 seconds, so I’m always mentally in go mode.
My last job I didn’t do 24s, but I did do 16s, and I had to work a lot of OT to pay rent, so it was not uncommon for me to work 6 days/80 hours a week and I definitely did not spend time sitting around the station. I was almost always out running calls. I’d come home, sleep for 3/4 hours and be out the door again to work.
Not trying to do the suffering one-upsmanship. I’ve had to do clinical shifts in the ER for my schooling and I hated every moment of it. I don’t think you could pay me enough to work in a hospital, it’s not my thing. I have deep respect for my nursing homies, I love them and always have had a great working relationship with them. OP commented that they don’t know any other jobs with such ridiculous working requirements so I added two.
HA! Maybe firefighters, but EMS gets to sit around the firehouse once in a bloody blue moon. The 24 hour shifts suck, because the chances of you actually getting to sleep during the night hours are incredibly low.
Sure, there are going to be differences based on where you are working, but generally EMS is nearly call-to-call.
Why do people constantly fall into “suffering one-upmanship” when discussing making things better? Who does that benefit? Why not simply agree that it’s wrong and work together to solve both problems?
Because the results of malpractice only kill, maim, or injure one person at a time.
In aviation, however, the consequences are much more visible; so commercial pilots have regulated limits to flight duty.
Funnily enough, those duty cycle limits played a significant role in history’s worst aviation accident: The collision of 747s at Tenerife.
The short version of the story: There was some bomb threat at a European airport, so traffic bound there had to divert to wherever else they could. A lot of them ended up landing on the Spanish island of Tenerife, at an airport not used to handling that much large aircraft traffic. This included two 747s full of passengers.
When it was time for them to go, a thick bank of fog had rolled in. The taxiway was apparently not suitable for 747s so they had to taxi down the runway. The first of the two 747s had taxied to the end of the runway and was in position and ready for takeoff. Extremely ready for takeoff; the captain was pre-occupied with a recently tightened air crew duty cycle policy and was anxious to get home before going over his hours.
The second was taxiing up the runway straight toward the first, and had missed a turn off the runway, so they were kind of jackknifed across the runway trying to figure out where they were.
The captain of the first jet decided to take off without clearance from the tower. One 747 under full takeoff power T-boned another 747. Nearly 600 people died.
I’m all for crew duty cycle rules, we shouldn’t have exhausted pilots at the controls. Something that has kind of shut my life down is the notion that even our good laws turn poisonous when interpreted with absolute strictness. A pilot afraid of breaking the “You’re not allowed to over-work pilots because flying tired is unsafe” law killed 583 people including himself.
The video I linked above calls it “The Worst Air Disaster In History.” It’s one episode of a long-running series, and they always feel the need to come up with some similar line, so some of them are “The worst single-aircraft disaster involving a non-American made plane operated by an American airline to take place during daytime.” I think my favorite quote from the show was during the Cross Air CFIT episode, “On board was Passion Fruit, Germany’s answer to the Spice Girls.”
Because the alternative is the rich paying more in taxes, and we can’t have that obviously.
I don’t understand why people aren’t voting for the uber-rich to pay their fair share. Billionaires pay less tax percentage-wise than any worker out there and it’s all because we focus so much on income tax. The uberrich don’t have income - the have wealth, which isn’t taxed.
Not really.
Universal healthcare could be more than paid for just with what we pay in insurance.
It’s still money, but in this case it’s that profit healthcare is tied to employment causing employers across all industries to want less employees, which means a lot of overtime.
The real solution was shortening the work week to spread the labor around while keeping salaries high.
That seems very US specific. In Europe, we have universal healthcare, but it’s chronically underfunded.
sounds like a billionaire problem
It damn well is, no doubt about it.
always is. Universal healthcare is a reality. We just have a billionaire problem
the rich hospital admins, they skimp out on hiring more mds to rotate the burnouts.
Mods, jail.
There’s a number of factors at play and rest is only one of them. Other factors are cost cutting in hiring and risk of information loss or error during patient transfers.
I’m not okay with it but it’s the type of problem that can only be solved by them. They have to go on strike and protest.
In a vacuum, yes. The problem is that when, say, chip fabricators go on strike, orders for microchips don’t get fulfilled on time and the company loses money. When SAG goes on strike for months, movies get delayed, and people usually cheer them on in solidarity. When MEDICAL professionals go on strike en mass, people will die… Quickly, in some cases. People say they support us, and I get a free breakfast once a year at Denny’s during Nurse’s Week, but nobody’s going to cheer on the picket line outside when their dad or grandmother is INSIDE, sitting in their own poop, or not being fed, or having respiratory distress.
You don’t go into nursing for the money or easy work. You don’t even do it because it’s “just a job to pay the bills” because there’s way easier ways to make this little money. You do it to because you’re the kind of person who is more fulfilled by helping a stranger than by helping yourself, and those people are not ok with risking the life and safety of their patients over a shift differential. A LOT of nurses would cross the line to help them anyway, which would negate the whole effort… It sucks, but that’s it.
I’ve been a nurse for about 10 years now after getting out of the military, so I have some perspective on this, but I don’t know what the way forward is without letting a couple of vulnerable people die to catalyze change in the field.
I understand, but you guys are setting yourselves on fire to keep society warm.
In Japan when bus drivers go on strike they don’t stop the buses, but they stop taking bus fare from riders so the company doesn’t get paid. Maybe something involving medical notes so they can’t get billing codes.
That would be the perfect balance, but we’re not the ones taking the money like the bus drivers. Even if we were, they can always send a bill later. Messing with the notes would be falsifying medical records, which is one of the Cardinals sins of healthcare… and is also a crime.
Hey, regarding false medical notes, I’ve got a recently discovered whopper of falsehood. I’m going to keep this vague.
Patient suddenly can’t walk/stand, has very limited sensation in lower limbs. Goes to ER, spinal cord compression protocol clears and they are admitted. Long weekend of no progress. Patient leaves in a wheel chair, almost no change in symptoms.
Years later, they are collecting medical records for new doc and discover the notes from that stay in the hospital saying that all the symptoms spontaneously resolved before discharge. Wtf
Nurses can and do strike. People support them because organized nurses who can enforce collective decisions provide the best care.
There was just a victory in New York:
https://www.ajmc.com/view/historic-nyc-nursing-strike-ends-with-3-year-contract-wins
I’m aware this has happened a few times, but I don’t fully understand how. I keep meaning to look into it further, but I’ve never seen a detailed explanation of who was caring for people while this was going on. Maybe it’s buried in one of those articles somewhere, but I don’t have time to read through them right now.
We have to vote. They can’t be left alone.
We vote, but it’s not enough.
Do you? Do we? We currently consistently have about 20-50% of the population in Europe voting for far-right to conservative - parties that don’t give 2 shits about medical staff unless they require treatment. And even then, some of them don’t care about them because “do your job and stop whining”.
And that’s just the people that vote. At municipal level the voter participation is abysmal.
It’s the same situation in the US. My own mother votes for the most vile Republicans against our interests because she’s been so stuffed with hate and tribalism from Fox news all she cares about is that dopamine hit from “my team is winning”. No amount of reasoning will overcome that addictive hit of dopamine.
It’s a carefully manufactured propaganda machine funded by people with power we could only dream about reaching out from here to the EU.
Even the youth here in the south vote against their interests because abortion and immigrants bad jesus good. Education has been dismantled and even if they knew what was going on our districts are so gerrymandered it probably wouldn’t matter.
People need to be inoculated against billionaire propoganda, but how do you do that when they control the media and schools?
We’re not going to get anything done done within the system because they control the system. Strikes and violence or extremely disruptive protesting are going to have to happen.
I’m disabled, have lived an entire year in the hospital such that they unofficially named a room after me on floor 5 and: this is the triple that I am okay with them working. Sitting in a chair, sleeping and making sure the psych/trauma surg patient doesn’t escape. That’s it. And honestly, it should be a hammock. I have this idea for a business hammock. Maybe I could sell hospital hammocks.
Doubles, I’m only good with them in emergencies. And having been the cause of a few emergency shift doubles in my day, I appreciate those of you willing to pull them. Those of you pulling triples, go to sleep. If your third shift isn’t one of the above sleeping shifts you’re intentionally taking unnecessary risks that are going to kill someone.
ITT: Everyone is exploited, but not as badly as my profession is. Stop crying.
Because they’re such precious rare exceptional people, we just can’t have more of them.
Momentum is hard to overcome and it’s been done this way for many many years
The guy who is largely attributed to making the medical residency system so punishingly difficult in terms of hours was coke addict btw. William Stewart Halsted. That was like 1890 and residents didn’t have their hours limited until 2003 (and even then, barely)
Yeah, I saw that they were “limited” to 80 fucking hours a week (in the US). Quite the limit.
we arnt, but its the NETWORKS, hospitals pushing them to do it. mostly as a way to solve the shortage and to cheap out on hiring more staff. PLUS EQUITY companies are buying doctors as well making it worst for the above.
at least from my insurance HMO, and other insurances, they MDs are pushed to only 20min/patients max, so they have to go through tons of patients in a day burning them out. a doctor which was my pcp havnt seen for more than a decade was visibly stressed from all those patients she had to see.
also lets not forget the MD industry is gatekept by the AMA, they limit how much licenses they will allow every year+ the immense amount of time fOR medical school+ costs, and then post school training.
