National Nurses United has been fighting for nurses and patients. We do not have a nursing shortage. We have a shortage of nurses willing to be part of the broken system that treats nurses and patients poorly, squeezes them relentlessly for profits.
When my husband was in the hospital for a life-threatening illness, it was the nurses who held everything together in their chapped-from-1,000,000-washings hands. I found out that the nurses had an eight-hour shift that ended when the nurses from the next shift came on duty. Sounds reasonable...except that the incoming nurses needed to be updated on thousands of details involving everything from administration to supplies to patient care and the people doing that updating were the nurses whose shifts had ended. Those nurses were simply expected to stay an extra 30-45 minutes to do this, without pay! Why did their overlords know the nurses would do this, and not simply walk out when the clock told them their shift was over? Because they know the kind of people who become nurses would never enganger the lives of the patients under their care by leaving without having updated the incoming shift. Think of the millions of hours of labor that have been stolen this way!!
The angel/saint and naughty nurse tropes mirror the female whore/saint stereotype for a reason. Reducing us to tropes allows the system to go on relying on our labor, ignoring our expertise and the very real risks we take at work to the hold health care system together.
Common problem since I don’t know-forever. In the US we have something called safe harbor. You are supposed to call your supervisor and declare safe harbor when you feel like your nursing load or circumstances are unsafe. I have never seen anything such as help come from anyone trying to use this. Hospitals refuse to set limits on patient/ nurse ratio. When you try to declare safe harbor the supervisors have very complicated ways of, in my opinion, getting out of it. They say nurse/ pt ratio is determined by the experience of each nurse so that some nurses can handle X amount of pts and also will bring up how many lesser educated staff is available to ‘help’.
All that said, I have never seen safe harbor do anything other than put a bad mark on the nurse who tried to get help this way. Thank you for bringing attention to these problems. I am a semi retired nurse now and thought maybe the nursing problems spotlighted by COVID might do something but unfortunately I haven’t seen anything change.
I much enjoy such speech from one I presume to be a colleague! The health system was broken before the plandemic -- I saw it as throwing itself upon a needle; I stepped aside. I regret not viewing any of your theatrical productions. There's not much time to read, but you might find Ludwig Edelstein's "Ancient Medicine" a tonic read.
I somehow had Comments turned off... back on now!
National Nurses United has been fighting for nurses and patients. We do not have a nursing shortage. We have a shortage of nurses willing to be part of the broken system that treats nurses and patients poorly, squeezes them relentlessly for profits.
When my husband was in the hospital for a life-threatening illness, it was the nurses who held everything together in their chapped-from-1,000,000-washings hands. I found out that the nurses had an eight-hour shift that ended when the nurses from the next shift came on duty. Sounds reasonable...except that the incoming nurses needed to be updated on thousands of details involving everything from administration to supplies to patient care and the people doing that updating were the nurses whose shifts had ended. Those nurses were simply expected to stay an extra 30-45 minutes to do this, without pay! Why did their overlords know the nurses would do this, and not simply walk out when the clock told them their shift was over? Because they know the kind of people who become nurses would never enganger the lives of the patients under their care by leaving without having updated the incoming shift. Think of the millions of hours of labor that have been stolen this way!!
The angel/saint and naughty nurse tropes mirror the female whore/saint stereotype for a reason. Reducing us to tropes allows the system to go on relying on our labor, ignoring our expertise and the very real risks we take at work to the hold health care system together.
Thank you for supporting us.
Spot on, as always, Ms. Atwood.
Nurses are the GREATEST!!!
Common problem since I don’t know-forever. In the US we have something called safe harbor. You are supposed to call your supervisor and declare safe harbor when you feel like your nursing load or circumstances are unsafe. I have never seen anything such as help come from anyone trying to use this. Hospitals refuse to set limits on patient/ nurse ratio. When you try to declare safe harbor the supervisors have very complicated ways of, in my opinion, getting out of it. They say nurse/ pt ratio is determined by the experience of each nurse so that some nurses can handle X amount of pts and also will bring up how many lesser educated staff is available to ‘help’.
All that said, I have never seen safe harbor do anything other than put a bad mark on the nurse who tried to get help this way. Thank you for bringing attention to these problems. I am a semi retired nurse now and thought maybe the nursing problems spotlighted by COVID might do something but unfortunately I haven’t seen anything change.
I much enjoy such speech from one I presume to be a colleague! The health system was broken before the plandemic -- I saw it as throwing itself upon a needle; I stepped aside. I regret not viewing any of your theatrical productions. There's not much time to read, but you might find Ludwig Edelstein's "Ancient Medicine" a tonic read.
Who inserts the suppository in you bum? Doctor? No. Nurse? Yes.