I hear hospitals often say, “We don’t have the budget to pay more for nurses” … “You signed up for this” … “Nursing is in your DNA; this is your calling.” All these are excuses to avoid paying nurses the money they deserve.
Yet, these healthcare facilities will pay handsomely for the services of travel nurses. Or they will offer sign on bonuses for new nurses which means you may end up working next to someone who is paid much more than you despite your long-term show of company loyalty.
An Ohio town has 2 hospitals for which one offered bonuses to keep nurses from leaving while the other offered, if you can believe this, a pizza party!
You are worthy and deserving of your pay. You deserve not only to be paid equal to a travel nurse, but you deserve to be paid for your continued loyalty.
The pay for you and your coworkers is not based on the hospital’s budget. You deserve to be paid what you’re worth.
I often say, “You can’t pay the average person enough money for them to do what nurses do.” Nurses are exposed to every bodily fluid and to every germ known and unknown to man! It is not a job for the weary or faint of heart and that’s why nurses are so special and unique.
You do deserve to be paid handsomely. Don’t allow hospitals to make excuses as to why you should be paid less. You absolutely deserve it.
Now is the time for nurses to stick together and demand to be paid what they’re worth. You should not be working alongside someone who is making more than you and may even have less experience.
Stand up for your rights, stand in your power and command what you deserve or otherwise nurses will continue to be the hand maiden of medicine. Nurses are not the discount bin or bargain basement of health care. A physician would not take less than what he deserves, so why should you?
Patients would not be in the hospital but for nurses and, again, nurses deserve to command the dollars that fully compensate them for the value of their services.
Last week I wrote on the topic of the Future of Nursing about the ANA article with 9 nursing leaders predicting what they saw in the future for the nursing profession. I added my own thoughts but as I sat with this more, I have some additional thoughts to share.
Certainly, coming from a business owner’s perspective, I have always been bothered why nursing services come with the hospital room just as do dietary and housekeeping.
Nurses possess a unique body of knowledge, and their services should be billable based on the acuity of the patient just as are those of physicians.
Let’s face it: the reason patients are in the hospital is for nursing care. It is the expertise and assessment ability of nurses to assess, plan, intervene and evaluate that helps patients eventually get well enough to be discharged.
What if patients and/or their families were given a profile of all the available nurses so that they could choose those from whom they would receive care? Those selected would then be paid for their services at a higher rate.
Nurses would have to market themselves to show their skill set as well as why they would be the best candidate to care for that patient.
Nurses would feel valued and appreciated because they would then know they were selected specifically for that patient’s care.
I think it would be interesting if nurses presented themselves, as do business owners, on the points of their value, worth and why the patient should choose them.
With hospitals taking the largest share of the payment for the hospitalization off the top, nurses deserve to be paid for their value as well.
If nurses were chosen as business owners, there still would be some form of quality assurance to make sure that the nurses are practicing within the standard of care and that the patients were getting what they needed. However, there would be no charge nurse or boss monitoring every action of the nurse.
As professionals, we should be trusted to do our jobs.
I also think healthcare is moving away from the traditional insurance model to where we turn our country’s focus from sick care to wellness care.
Nurses are great health and wellness coaches and can help people with wellness, compliance issues for chronic disease, all at a much lower cost than the premium for the insurance or the copay for other providers. Our country would have healthier citizens that live longer and would be more productive.
The nursing profession is probably in the most precarious position that it ever has been. Nurses are leaving in droves due to mandates forcing them to take “the shot.” Some are leaving because of the incredibly increased workload thrust upon them to make up for the nursing staff shortage. That shortage is forcing hospitals to offer huge sign-on bonuses to lure nurses to their facilities, thus depriving other healthcare facilities of their former valued nursing employees. And, of course, there are nurses leaving simply because the stress and burnout has made the job unbearable.
This cascading effect comes to a bottom line of overall healthcare system in peril.
The American Nurses Association interviewed a number of nursing leaders to see what they think about the future of nursing. Feel free to read the entire article.
Everyone has their paradigm or way of looking at things. If you are a director of nursing or a chief nursing officer, your paradigm is going to be regarding your organization and retaining nurses.
If you are an educator, your paradigm will be with regard to nursing education.
While many nursing leaders have espoused what they believe is the future of nursing, here is what I believe.
Much of what is happening in nursing is not necessarily a result of the pandemic. This wave has been coming for a while.
Nurses are not appreciated, being tossed away easily, and being replaced like factory workers. One healthcare institution had the “three strikes you’re out” rule. If you were sick on 3 different times within a year, you lost your job. Fortunately, that policy has changed.
Given that nurses are exposed to all kinds of pathogens, this only prompted nurses to come to work despite when they were not feeling well. Now it is even MORE dangerous for nurses to show up at work when they are ailing.
I believe that giving nurses huge sign-on bonuses is a mistake and an insult to those who have been loyal to the institution. Seeing a large financial incentive being offered to new incoming employees, those who have been loyal workers for months and years could be nudged to leave their current jobs in search of a new healthcare provider offering lucrative sign on bonuses.
Very little is being done to help nurses to deal with stress, burnout and depression. In fact, suicide rates for nurses are higher than that of the general population. Additionally, the peer assistance programs deal only with alcohol and substance abuse rather than with mental health issues.
In Indiana at least, the Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program, known as JLAP, assists attorneys with both substance abuse and mental health issues.
As nursing professionals, we are very giving and give to everybody else but ourselves. This mentality needs to change! The value of nurses to drive in the point that taking care of yourself first allows you to give more to others.
By forcing nurses to work mandatory overtime, this does not honor nurses and help their mental health. I would like to see a huge overhaul in our healthcare system, which is actually a “sickcare” system, and turn it into one of actual health and wellness care. So many things can be done to help our community citizens with a healthier more fulfilling life is not just education because if education did work, everyone would be in perfect health and wellness.
It is likely that we will see more home care because coordination of care by registered nurses will help people stay at home longer.
I agree that our care models need to change. As much as I loved practicing primary care as a nurse and doing everything for the patient, I think many of the tasks that nursing performs with the primary care model are things that can be taken care of by people who don’t have nursing training. There are others who can handle blood draws, respiratory therapy, etc.
It will be interesting to see how nursing chooses to reinvent itself after the pandemic. And, what I know for sure is that nurses need to stand together in their power to make the changes necessary to improve patient care in our profession.
Creating a divide by those who are vaccinated and those who are not, those who have a diploma degree and those that have a bachelors and all the other things that divide nurses, we will not be able to make the changes that we would like to see in our profession.
Everyone hates receiving those telemarketer phone calls. They are what I consider to be “cold calls.” If you’re calling a potential client or an attorney who you don’t know, good luck in trying to get past the gatekeeper or actually speaking to the potential client.
In addition, sending blind letters to attorneys or potential clients is such a great waste of money. Like the phone calls, many of these letters don’t get past the gatekeeper and are automatically dropped into the trash can.
The reason is that people need to know, like and trust you before they will want to work with you. Imagine getting a letter from a doctor reading, “I heard you need neurosurgery. Call my office.”
Would you be surprised?
Would you wonder why he’s so desperate that he’s sending these letters?
What would you do?
Cold calling and blind mailing is simply throwing away your money and time. It’s like taking a shotgun and having it spray everywhere versus a rifle, which is specifically targeted. While I’m not a gun fanatic, I think the shotgun versus a rifle analogy is very pertinent.
Ideally, you would want to create a relationship with a potential client so they know, like and trust you so that when you tell them you can help them with their matter, they will hire you. Once you establish a relationship, it is so much easier to get past the gatekeeper.
Usually as nurses, we are building the plane as we fly and still working at our day job. Why make it harder on yourself to market? There’s a simpler way of creating a relationship with the intended person first and then sharing how you can help.
It is hard to believe that we live in a first world nation that is one of the wealthiest on the planet yet needs to ration healthcare.
It is really scary how patients can go to a hospital and potentially be denied care because of a shortage of resources.
Not only that, and even scarier, is that hospitals are being shielded from liability for activating these crisis standards.
On September 1, 2021, Hawaii’s governor signed an order shielding healthcare facilities and workers from liability if they feel they must ration healthcare.
It is too bad that hospitals didn’t wake up long ago to treat nurses with respect, dignity and to cherish and appreciate them during this pandemic. As a result, many nurses have become burned out, frustrated, and have left the profession or are considering leaving.
It is sad to release facilities from liability when the main reason we have lawsuits in this country is to prevent governmental overreach and over-regulation.
Patients deserve the same standard of care regardless of whatever situation there may be in a hospital. Hospitals should be responsible for supplying adequate staffing of nurses and equipment.
This is not an excuse. Hospitals cannot be the arbiter of who gets treatment and who does not. According to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, anybody in an emergency medical condition who shows up at a hospital expects and deserves to be treated.
If a member of your family goes into a hospital and subsequently, because of a lack of proper staff, develops pressure ulcers, they will find that there is no remedy allowed because they cannot bring a claim or suit against the healthcare facility. THAT is against everything that his nation stands for.
The standard of care should not be changed solely because the hospital is not prepared and does not have enough healthcare staff, particularly nurses. The American Nurses Association is asking that the nursing shortage be declared a national crisis.
Interestingly, we have known about this nursing shortage for years! We knew that the baby boomers would be aging and looking forward to retirement. COVID just threw a wrench in the gears.
All hospitals should have been planning starting long before the pandemic to always have adequate staff. During the COVID invasion (and before), hospitals should have made sure that nurses were being respected and treated appropriately so that they would want to stay in the profession, if not with the healthcare facility itself.
Aside from decreased liability for rationing care, Indiana’s governor signed into law an act which shields nursing homes from liability during the pandemic.
It’s very troublesome that nursing homes, which are and have been for some time already understaffed in taking care of our country’s most vulnerable citizens, their families will be unable to file claims for injuries and/or death.
I have spent my legal career in both defense and prosecution of malpractice claims. That is part of our justice system: to make people whole. To prevent claims for negligence violates our rights.
If a member of your family in a nursing home were to develop bedsores during the pandemic, I am sure that you too would want them to be compensated for their medical care, pain and suffering.
I really don’t like writing politically charged newsletters however many nurses have reached out to me about this topic, and I am all about serving you, the readers, that I felt that it is important.
But first, as a brief report, a single hospital in Lowville, New York, the Lewis County Health System, has closed its maternity unit because several nurses have refused to get “the injection!” They will no longer deliver babies there until they find nurses, who have received, “the injection,” to replace their departed staff.
However, shortly thereafter, a New York Judge granted a temporary injunction stopping New York health care systems from requiring mandatory injections for health care workers.
From here, allow me to emphasize that I believe you have the right to accept or refuse what goes into your body. No matter what your choice may be, I respect it.
However, if you face having to choose to get the injection or be terminated, for educational purposes only, termination may be the better choice.
Being terminated, you can be eligible for unemployment benefits. In addition, if the mandates are at some point found to be in illegal, you can file suit.
It is my understanding that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Comirnaty which is reportedly the brand name for what was previously known as Pfizer-BioNTech. However, no Comirnaty is available and BionNTech is still being administered.
It also is my understanding that according to 21 U.S.C. § 360bbb–3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III) “… the option to accept or refuse administration of the product, of the consequences, if any, of refusing administration of the product, and of the alternatives to the product that are available and of their benefits and risks.’
Interestingly, other places say it is appropriate.
In addition, the U.S. Code does not state whether this applies to private or state employers.
While the law is being parsed out, we’ll just have to wait to see what becomes of this. I do not work in this area but would suggest that you contact an employment law attorney to determine your legal rights.
Something else you might choose to do is to see if your state allows you to provide a religious exemption for the injection. The threshold for a religious exemption is a strongly held personal belief which does not have to be a religion per se. Ideally, employers are not to question you about your beliefs, but we know they may still do so.
Under the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts 197 U.S. 11 (1905), the Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws.
I wish this was not happening, but it is. Nurses were the heroes last year and are now being fired.
The most important thing now is that you take of yourself and make sure that you have informed consent before deciding whether or not to take the injection!
Delaware recently became the 24th state to adopt full practice authority legislation which means that nurse practitioners can practice independently without physician oversight.
It is believed that the physician shortage is over 55,000 and the predicted shortfall of specialty physicians is close to 87,000. These numbers are scary because who will be available to provide care to people who choose traditional medicine?
Studies show that Nurse Practitioners have fewer claims of medical malpractice and I believe they enjoy higher patient satisfaction.
Unfortunately, the problems in nursing tend to continue for Nurse Practitioners as well.
Healthcare organizations need to do a better job at improving the culture so that nurses and nurse practitioners will want to stay in the profession and continue to be productive members in corporate healthcare rather than going out on their own, especially in states where there is full practice authority.
Some hospitals will fire a nurse who has a business outside the facility.
I believe that the hospital does not own you and a nurse should be allowed to do what they want in their free time without any interference from the facility. However, if you are a nurse who has a job outside the hospital and are doing something that would reflect unfavorably on your employer, they do have the right to terminate you.
In one case, a 37-year-old Boston area ICU nurse was forced to leave her hospital job because she had a “side gig.” Allie Rae, mother of 3, U.S. Navy veteran and nurse who served on the COVID medical front lines, is now a model with OnlyFans, where she displays herself in provocative poses, a job that brings in an unbelievable estimated $200,000.00 per month!
Even though she went by her pseudonym in the other job, other nurses at the hospital soon learned of her moonlighting and the issue quickly became a concern of the hospital’s administrators who said the photos did not portray nursing in a favorable light.
In my opinion, I think she looks amazing and wish that I looked that good at 37.
However, as nurses, we must uphold the standards requiring us to appear and be professional 24/7. While I disagree with the firing of nurses for having a “side gig,” I can understand the employers not wanting negative attention or that would make it seem their nurses were not professionals. I don’t understand employers terminating nurses with a second job of a legal nurse consultant, nurse advocate or another professional nursing position as long as it does not affect the healthcare facility and/or its reputation.
If you’re considering a side gig, the best advice is to be honest with your employer so you will know exactly where you stand. Be in integrity. The worst feeling is to hide or keep a secret. If your moonlight job reflects negatively on your health care job or the facility, I would not be surprised if the hospital is not supportive.
I wish the best for the former nurse, Allie Rae, in her new career and hope that, should she ever want, she could return to the world of nursing.
