There is no "nursing shortage" in the Ozarks. The PROBLEM is that you guys pay chicken scratch and won't address staffing ratios. The patients are sicker, have more comorbidities, and you expect us to cater to them as if they were vacationing in a five star hotel. We can't safely care for 7 or 8 patients when they're that sick. There are shifts when 4 or 5 patients are too many. PLUS, we can drive to Memphis, Tulsa, or Little Rock and be paid TWICE what you pay, you effers.SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - CoxHealth is about to hire 100 nurses from overseas. The health system said over the past years it has experienced growth all across the board: A 10 percent growth in admissions to a 10 percent growth in emergency departments.Chief Nursing Officer Karen Kramer said CoxHealth is trying to be proactive. Kramer said CoxHealth began recruiting it realized the region is tapped out of nurses. The nursing officer said Cox College is looking to expand it's programs but it will take years to increase numbers.
Go ahead. Import your foreign nurses. Drive wages down even further. You anticipate that you can work the little brown people half to death and they won't complain, hmm? Cox Health, you are a racist pigs.
Call me racist but I didn't want the "learning" nurses from sub-saharan Africa when I was in the hospital for complicated surgery (twice) in 2007. The guy could hardly speak English and I couldn't make myself understood. He was going to take out my IV (which they had to get a specialist nurse to put in as my veins were tiny and squiggly) and I knew I had a CTscan scheduled and NEEDED THAT IV!
ReplyDeleteIt was so damn traumatic. He also washed in my sink and when I was finally able to get up and use it, it was full of hair, UGH. I want 5 star treatment, dammit.
Hee hee, just kidding about that last part, lady red. Basically, I just didn't want anyone setting my recovery back or worse. My first night post surgery (which hadn't gone well), I was assaulted by a demented alzheimer's patient from the next bed who thought I had kidnapped someone.
I'm sorry this is happening, lady red. I had some wonderful nurses, I still remember them after almost a decade. They were overworked and probably underpaid but they were crucial in helping me recover and they were also very understanding and caring. I adored them.
I'm sorry you had that experience florrie. It's wrong, but it happens all the time; not just with foreign nurses, but doctors too. If the patient cannot understand them, there is a problem. And hair in the sink? Ew. Just EW.
DeleteNowadays the hospitals send patients a satisfaction survey, and the results will affect compensation and promotion status. We don't have time to be in one patient's room countless times a shift fluffing pillows and getting just the right number of ice cubes in that Sprite.
We try, though. We really do.
The last hospital I worked at has resorted to staffing LPNs into RN positions. The RNs are either thoroughly shattered from the long hours and patient acuity, or refuse to put their licenses on the line when required to care for too many patients at once.
It's something to think about if your loved one goes in for a cardiac bypass surgery and has LPNs caring for him instead of RNs. It's scary as hell. VERY scary.
I think of you every time I see this commercial.
ReplyDeleteYes, I LOVE that one! :)
DeleteThe joys of globalism, once again. I know the Philippines has a tradition of producing excellent nurses and sending them to the US, but they all learn English in grade school there.
ReplyDeleteBut using H1B visas to bring in those without the requisite language skills should NEVER be done in a field like nursing, where it is, literally, life and death