Stop voting these people.
I think that for safety reasons it might be a good idea to cut nurses' shifts from 3 12-hour shifts to more of a normal 8 hour workday. Nurses are overworked, and adding fatigue from 12-hour shifts increases the risk of harm for clients. Even cutting their workday to 10 hours max would be an improvement.
That being said, anyone who thinks that nurses have nothing to do other than sit around and play cards must have gotten all of their health care knowledge from old reruns of MASH.
Cutting shifts from 12 hours for the majority of nurses across an entire state would be a logistical nightmare. Many nurses (from my experience, most) who work 8 hour shifts hate it and would prefer to work 10's or 12's, and those who work 12's wouldn't give that away. You know what would be of more benefit to nurses?
Ensure proper staffing, in general but specifically so that we all can actually get the rest breaks we should (by law) be afforded (hint, this is a huge problem and is likely under exaggerated by nurses)
Reduce the nurse to patient ratios of most departments
Prosecute those patients who assault/threaten/injure/kill healthcare professionals (not just nurses)
Ensure proper staffing of support staff in medical facilities-e.g. security, housekeeping, CNAs, transporters, etc...
the list goes on. I submit, having worked 8, 10, 12 hour shifts, with a number of hours of overtime on any one of those aforementioned lengths of shifts, that it is less about the time total at work and more about the lack of support to do our damn jobs the way they should be done.
ps and screw patient entitlement and satisfaction. You come to the emergency room and you're alive (or at least better than when you arrived, for legitimate reasons)? You're satisfied.
Senator Walsh is ignorant and should keep her mouth shut on this topic. Nurses deserve plenty of respect and admiration for the work they do, and while there my be a few exceptions, on the whole, they work very hard and barely get decent breaks. We should be doing more so support these incredible people for the great job they do!
This was actually a topic at dinner tonight. One of my brother in laws is a nurse and several people in his family are as well or have been. Through them they know a few nurses that work in WA and most are looking to move if it does go live since it will limit overtime, days off, working at other locations. Great examples of this are things like the VA which is primarily staffed by people who have privileges at the VA and other facilities and work both in the same week. This is a bad idea on so many levels.
"Privilege is invisible to those who have it."
That land-whale is going to end up in an emergency room needing help for her cardiac issues some day soon, and will find that just for her, nurses will go play cards for a few hours instead of helping.
I currently work in a hospital in the IT department. I work night shifts and even on nights how busy the nurses are depends on what ward they are on and how many patients there are. Some of the wards are busier than others. For example our emergency room is often pretty busy especially with summer coming up cause Cedar Point will be opening for the season. I anticipate our emergency room to get much busier. As far as patient wards some are dead boring at night and some are quite busy. Generally if one ward doesn't have enough patients for the amount of nurses they will send the nurses to help in other wards. the exception for this usually seems to be the ICU or the Maternity/post partum wards. They are always staffed whether anyones in the beds or not.
I have respect for the nurses. and they deserve the breaks when they can get them. Not only do they deal with the patients but they have to deal with Doctors. Some doctors can behave like children to people who work in the hospital.
Kom graun, oso na graun op. Kom folau, oso na gyon op.
#IStandWithGinaCarano
Nurses do work long hours.
Lately I've been losing a lot of respect for the nursing field, particularly because of new nurses and nursing students. I find that a lot of women enter this field because they think it's the quickest way to easy money and a respectable job. Like you only need a two year degree to become a registered nurse. Because of this, you rarely encounter someone who is actually passionate about nursing and helping the patients, and you hear their constant whining about either the coursework or the work itself. It's highly annoying and I really wish the requirements to be a registered nurse were increased. Really need to weed out the people who don't deserve to be there, and are only in it purely for the money grab.
I work in a hospital, albeit as kitchen staff, but I'm still in the wards frequently delivering meals (too patients) and see all the work going on. I see all the same shit (sometimes literal) as nurses do. They never stop working.
Hell I've accidentally walked in a nurse picking dry excrement out of an elderly mans behind.
Last edited by Crackleslap; 2019-04-20 at 09:57 AM.
12 hour shifts isn't the problem here. Understaffing by hospitals is the problem. In fact, you receive better care if you have the correct amount of nurses staffed while working 12 hour shifts instead of the same amount of nurses working 8 hour shifts. The reason for this is less people taking care of you and less likely to not notice a small difference between the start of a shift and the end of a shift. When a nurse gives report at the end of their 8 hour shift small things that happened can be overlooked if the change is very small whereas if a nurse noticed a change at the end of a 12 hour shift it would typically be more significant. Then there's also the fact that with how draining working as a nurse is, working 3 12 hour shifts and then being off 2 or 3 days to recoup and then coming back for another 3 12 hour shifts is easier on the body than working that exhausting work 5 days a week while only having 2 days to recover before going back for another 5 days straight of working. I've done fast food. I've done customer service. I've done nursing. Nursing by far is the most mentally exhausting & draining job I've had but at the same time has been the most rewarding job I've had.
Not mutually exclusive. In this case, support for nurses and bashing this idiot Republican (which is kinda of an oxymoron similar to "a little pregnant")
You are correct in that most nurses prefer to work 12 hour shifts because it allows them more days off to recover from the job than working 5 days a week. You should also be made aware that your RN & LPN/LVN is working those 12 hour shifts while your MA, CNA, and techs are working 5 days a week 8 hours a day. It used to be standard that all medical and nursing staff worked the 12's but there was a shift to keep the RN & LVN/LPN working the 12's while the rest moved on to 8 hour shifts instead. Your CNA does more labor intenstive work than your RN & LVN/LPN because your CNA is who does the manual labor in the nursing field. Nurses (CNA is a nursing assistant not a nurse) are responsible for overseeing the CNA, administering medications, and doing treatments the doctor says needs to be done that he/she doesn't have to do.
My boyfriend calls her look/hairstyle the "I want to speak to your supervisor" hairstyle. Also nursing is not an easy field to get into and keep doing day in day out. It can be mentally and physically draining on a person. Don't get me wrong though, it is also one of the most rewarding jobs you'll ever have too but the demands on nurses is mind boggling.
I know I touched on this above in this reply but I thought I'd explain it a little differently to address your concerns. The 2 nurses 12 hour shift is better for the patient care than having 3 separate nurses take care of you during the 24 hours in a day. The fatigue in working in this type of environment doesn't kick in until about hour 16 which is why even doctors, medical students, and interns are limited to how many hours they can work straight even while on call inside the hospital. You are 100% correct in that nurses are overworked but that has to do more with the laws that allow hospitals to get away with nursing shortages. Currently here in California, we're the ONLY state in the USA that has minimum nurse to patient ratios for care. A hospital has to have 1 nurse for every 2 patients in ICU, critical care, labor & delivery (active delivery), post-op, and neonatal ICU. For ER triage (checking you in after the vitals & insurance check in person), pediatrics, specialty (like oncology, etc), telemetry (nurses that monitor heart patients via machines that are hooked up to the patient), and couplet care (caring for mom & baby together instead of different wards) all have a 1 to 4 ratio. Med/surg can allow 1 to 5. Psych can allow 1 to 6. Trauma ER & all OR is a 1 on 1 ratio minimum. Keep in mind this only applies to California since we are the ONLY state in the USA to have minimum nurseatient ratios. Additionally 7 other states have regulations that allow nurse committees to determine staffing & policy guidelines but as committees can change from year to year, quarter to quarter there is nothing set in stone in those 7 states like California has nor are there penalties & fines to hospitals like California has in place. Keep in mind, those nurse to patient ratios only apply to RN & LVN/LPN in an acute setting (aka hospital). CNAs and all nursing homes/SNF are completely different.
In a nursing home, your RN or LVN/LPN can be in charge of up to 40 to 60 residents (don't call them patients in a nursing home because that's their home and they reside there) in a single shift. Ratios for CNAs in nursing homes/SNF vary from state to state but typically most states allow 1 CNA to be assigned to care for 10-25 residents during their shift. Currently there's only like 15 states that have limits on the amount of people assigned to a CNA in a nursing home/SNF while states that don't have limits can see 1-2 CNAs care for up to 50-60 residents for their shift. Hospital settings for CNAs are a little different because they have a certain number of CNAs assigned to one area of the hospital while they have what's called "floaters" who literally will float from area to area as needed to keep the ratios lower in the areas with higher amount of care needed or higher amount of patients to care for. BTW I should add that your CNA you see that is is busting their ass in nursing homes is normally making maybe $1-2 over minimum wage. The reason for this is a CNA only requires a 2-4 month course to get certified which has ZERO advanced training or studying required (I've been a CNA before).
Also as @medievalman1 pointed out, cutting shifts to 8 hours a day would actually increase the demand for nurses and would be a logistical nightmare to implement. Nursing is already a high demand job with not enough RNs being churned out by nursing schools to keep up with the demands. To make this higher need would be OMG unthinkable.
Had to bold, italic, underline, and even colored red the important stuff of your post. As I said to Celista above, California is the ONLY state in the USA that has minimum patient to nurse ratios. 1 our of fucking 50 states (51 if you count DC since it doesn't have a ratio minimum either). Even then, its just for the RN and LVN's here. CNAs don't have patient ratios. They just get "recommendations" here.
If you talk to nurses who have been in the field for years you'll hear the general consensus is that in order to just be accepted into a RN or LVN program the person should have at least been a CNA before and worked in a hospital or nursing home/SNF as a CNA. This is so the would-be RN/LVN/LPN can see what really goes into becoming a nurse. I agree that there are far too many new RNs and LVN/LPNs who have had zero hands-on patient care in a medical setting that get out of school and do a shitty job. They are apathetic when it comes to their patients. They are just in it because they know they have a job that is in high demand, will always be in high demand since people will always need medical help regardless of the advancements in medical technology, and a job that pays well because of the whole supply vs demand thing. These nurses give the entire profession a bad name. What I'm happy about is more and more nursing programs are now requiring their applicants to at least have their CNA license in order to apply. Sadly they aren't requiring them have job experience in the field, just the certification. I think every single nursing program should have a minimum requirement of 6 months job experience as a CNA before they can even apply for the nursing program. It would help weed out the bitches that are just looking to make money and not care about their job.
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Oh yeah forgot to reply to this one. You may joke about scrubs but let me tell you, some of those scrubs are the most comfortable clothes you'll ever wear. Granted not all but the ones that aren't the $10 per piece ones usually are so freakin comfy. I just bought 2 sets of scrubs a week ago and paid just shy of $150 for the 2 sets. So lightweight and nice feeling. They are designed to allow your body to breath while you work in them all while repelling shit (sometimes literally lol). A good scrubs set is worth the investment because you'll be wearing it 8-12 hours a day and basically doing the equivalent of a cardio workout for that whole time. If you aren't wearing something comfortable, you're screwed lol. Same thing for a good pair of shoes for on the floor. Don't go cheap with your shoes as a nurse or you'll regret it by the end of your first shift in them.
Resident Cosplay Progressive
https://votesmart.org/candidate/camp...h#.XLr0HehKiUk
https://www.opensecrets.org/revolvin...s.php?id=70494
Many of her doners are in medical.
World needs more Goblin Warriors https://i.imgur.com/WKs8aJA.jpg
I feel like a lot of US politicians are so far removed from the general public that they shouldn't be in a position of power.
These are the same people who think you're too lazy to be rich. The same people who swindle millions if not billions of dollars in tax evasion and other things. They've no clue how the world works yet they sit at the top telling everyone else how to live.
"We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-Louis Brandeis
This is an illustration of the number 1 problem in politics: unpleasant bitter unintelligent people making rules about subjects they clearly know nothing about and in this case obviously have a personal grudge clouding their rational judgment.
I don't have any experience being a nurse nor do I know any nurses, but I do have some experience with stress/burnout studies in psychology where nurses are often the primary object of the study. I've seen the data, I've read the focus group results and I've read the meta analyses basically confirming one solid thing in my mind: being a nurse is damn hard work mentally and physically. Any hospital who wants its nurses to perform at the best of their ability has a vested interest in making sure they are being taken care of.
The only part where I agree with this woman is that this should not happen through legislation. But that's not her angle.
Last edited by Ashina; 2019-04-20 at 10:53 AM.
I'm more than willing to take heat on this for being ignorant, but why are nurses, of all professions, working 12-hour shifts. I understand a lot of people would like to work in big chunks for 3 days and get the rest of the week off. I understand it's nice for patients to see the same faces all day and that it's easier for the hospital to schedule longer shifts.
However, what about fatigue and burn-out on a life-saving job? Is it humane to expect people to work 12 hours (or more) in a row? Is it safe to the nurse and to patients? I don't have the answers, just the questions.
The problem is as it stands now, hospitals under staff their nurses daily. If you've ever been to a hospital where there wasn't understaffed nursing then you've been to a hospital that is ran BY nurses FOR nurses. Even here in Cali where we are the ONLY state that has minimum ratios for nurses and patients in an acute setting, hospitals still only allow the bare minimum to be on staff for that time. They will send people home if they are "overstaffed". Same goes for nursing homes with the CNA if they are "overstaffed".
You should read my previous follow up comment that was pretty long on page 2 and you'll see what I said about that.