5 West Nursing

In an effort to cut cost, our hospital has decided that the best way to accomplish this is to increase patient load and decrease support personel. For example, the current nurse-patient ratio in our ICU is 2 to 1. It will now be increase 3 to 1, and when the census hits a certain “low” point, CNAs and ward clerks would have to be cancelled. I guess having a “level 3 trauma” designation doesn’t matter. So much for meeting the national “patient safety” goal and “service excellence” the hospital champions so much which I think is a bunch of sticky BULL SHIT! You know, the kind of BULL SHIT that stinks so bad you can smell it a mile away… the kind that sticks to your clothing your only recourse is to burn your clothes when you get home because no matter how much laundry you use, the stank ain’t comin’ off.

I’m not sure how our managers come up with these “cost cutting” measures but I think they are forgetting those who matter the  most… our patients. If you want to know how well a hospital takes care of their patients, all you need to do is ask a nurse that works there the following question: “Would you want to be admitted here if you got sick?”. If they answer “yes”, then you know you’ve found quality health care. Unfortunately I cannot say the same for MMC. The attitude that prevails here is the “I just work here” attitude. I think this is the kind of poison that plagues our healthcare industry today. There is no such thing as nursing as a calling. Like everything else, corporate America has reduced nursing to a “job”. Hey, I’ll just “do my job” and everything will be OK, right? After all, nursing is a “recession proof” profession… I’ll always be ”in demand” regardless of my attitude, right? It’s a good thing that the job description doesn’t include clauses that require us to have a cheerful disposition, a “positive outlook”, or a “do it with a friendly smile” demeanor. You can’t force a person into being customer friendly if they don’t have it in them… and you sure can’t foster a customer friendly attitude if you’re going to cut cost by decreasing support or increasing the work load on your “front line” soldiers.

I wonder if this could be one of the reasons we are facing a nursing shortage crisis of epic proportions. According to the AACN, the nursing shortage could reach as high as 500,000 by 2025 (AACN, 2008). Part of the problem is attributed to the low rate of enrollment for new nurses as well as a shortage of nursing faculty which restrict nursing program enrollments. There is an aging nursing population with an average age of current RNs in their mid 40s. I think this number is steadily on the rise, given the fact that with all the stress that comes with the job, the average nurse ages three times more than the average person. On top of this, there is a fast turn over and a large number of nurses leaving the job. And like our dependence on foreign oil, we too are dependent on foreign nurses to meet the demands we are facing today.

Before the recent Wall Street bailout, the healthcare industry has already been experiencing a bailout of its own. Unfortunately this bailout is not in the form of money given by the government to rescue failing companies, but rather, the steady decrease in nursing personnel brought about mostly by unreasonable demands created in the workplace. The notion that nursing is a tough profession and that it takes a special kind of person to be a nurse may be true to some degree, however, nurses aren’t immune to fatigue and burn out, not to mention boredom. I think the healthcare industry need to be more heavily regulated in terms of what should be expected in the workplace. For example, standardize nurse patient ratios and fine hospitals who do not adhere to the guidelines, increase salaries for bedside nurses and mandate acuity based staffing as well as provide adequate support personnel such as CNAs or ward clerks at all times regardless of patient census. This of course is a pipe dream. The fact of the matter is, nobody gives a damn! The best thing we can do at this point is to shut up and “do our jobs”. Until then, lets sit back, relax, and watch the healthcare industry meltdown. Fortunately for me, I’ve got front row seats!