Despite the consistently wonderful press about the trust that Americans place in the nursing profession, not to mention the heady days of new nurses being assured a plethora of jobs upon graduation, the nursing zeitgeist seems just a little diminished and subdued these days. At least for now, many new grads are hard pressed to find work and there is little to cheer about when it comes to nurses' economic standing.
Showing posts with label nurse staffing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nurse staffing. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
The Disneyfication of Nursing?
A recent article on Boston.com describes efforts by hospitals to offer specialized training to nurses in customer service and courtesy. According to some reports, many hospitals are hiring outside consultants in order to boost customer satisfaction surveys in response to Medicare's new ruling that they will begin basing a small percentage of payments to hospitals in accordance with facilities' "patient experience" scores.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Nurses Need Support
The more nurses I talk to, whether in my clinical nursing work or as a coach for nurses, it's increasingly obvious to me that nurses simply need support. While "Nurses Day" and the accompanying flowers, buttons and pens may be nice gestures, Nurses Day and other such celebrations would mean a whole lot more if meaningful support---not platitudes---were offered to nurses who so desperately need it.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Gender, Healthcare and Communication
Last night on RN.FM Radio during a discussion with Beth Boynton, the nurse author of "Confident Voices: The Nurses' Guide to Improving Communication and Creating Positive Workplaces", we touched on the subject of gender and its effects on communication. Countless books on communication between the sexes have been written---the ones most readily coming to mind being those by Deborah Tannen, including "You Just Don't Understand" and "That's Not What I Meant"---and I am keen to point out that there is currently no book on the market of which I am aware that specifically discusses the gender aspects of communication within healthcare.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
New Nurses: Where to Go?
It seems that newly graduated nurses who want to remain in New England may need to rethink their job-hunting strategy.
According to nursing students that I know who are graduating next month, the lack of nursing jobs in New England---especially in the Boston area---is an enormous disappointment. According to one student I spoke with today, only four of her fellow graduates have landed a post-graduation job, whereas in previous years, recruiters were falling over themselves to hire new grads as fast as they could pass the state boards.
While a nursing shortage still seems to be cooking in the health care cauldron, the economic engine driving the creation of new nursing jobs is sputtering, at best. And while New England currently seems to have a hiring freeze in place, states like Texas, Florida, California and Montana are apparently the places to go for new nurses---or seasoned ones---to find gainful employment.
If hospitals and health care facilities are still short-staffed but unable to hire, what are they doing to their nurses whom they still employ? Are double-shifts and mandatory overtime being touted as the answer to the shortage? With hiring freezes in place, do the nurses on staff work harder, care for even more patients, and sprint headlong towards burnout? What are the human resource consequences when conditions prevent new nurses from being brought into the workforce despite an ongoing shortage?
I'm no expert, but I can see that the nursing economy has been hit hard by the current economic downturn, and if I was a new nurse just out of school, I would think outside of the box, look as far afield as I could, and be willing to travel wherever the work was. Be it Florida, Texas or Montana, getting one's feet wet as a novice nurse is crucial, and spending some time in an unfamiliar region of the country might not necessarily be a bad thing, especially if one is young, unattached, and prepared to relocate for gainful employment.
I have encouraged many people to go to nursing school, and I hope that those who have heeded my advice don't rue the day that they made the fateful decision to become a nurse. But like all situations, this current economic reality will also pass, and nursing's economic and employment landscape will also change.
Lucky and blessed to myself have an interesting (but not terribly well-paying) job, I wish these new grads luck, and hope that they can navigate these current waters with grace and a modicum of patience.
Every nurse deserves a job, and every patient deserves a well-educated and well-paid nurse. My hope is that this current crop of new grads will find the employment they need, the experience they desire, and rest assured that they have chosen their new career well, no matter the current economic conditions.
According to nursing students that I know who are graduating next month, the lack of nursing jobs in New England---especially in the Boston area---is an enormous disappointment. According to one student I spoke with today, only four of her fellow graduates have landed a post-graduation job, whereas in previous years, recruiters were falling over themselves to hire new grads as fast as they could pass the state boards.
While a nursing shortage still seems to be cooking in the health care cauldron, the economic engine driving the creation of new nursing jobs is sputtering, at best. And while New England currently seems to have a hiring freeze in place, states like Texas, Florida, California and Montana are apparently the places to go for new nurses---or seasoned ones---to find gainful employment.
If hospitals and health care facilities are still short-staffed but unable to hire, what are they doing to their nurses whom they still employ? Are double-shifts and mandatory overtime being touted as the answer to the shortage? With hiring freezes in place, do the nurses on staff work harder, care for even more patients, and sprint headlong towards burnout? What are the human resource consequences when conditions prevent new nurses from being brought into the workforce despite an ongoing shortage?
I'm no expert, but I can see that the nursing economy has been hit hard by the current economic downturn, and if I was a new nurse just out of school, I would think outside of the box, look as far afield as I could, and be willing to travel wherever the work was. Be it Florida, Texas or Montana, getting one's feet wet as a novice nurse is crucial, and spending some time in an unfamiliar region of the country might not necessarily be a bad thing, especially if one is young, unattached, and prepared to relocate for gainful employment.
I have encouraged many people to go to nursing school, and I hope that those who have heeded my advice don't rue the day that they made the fateful decision to become a nurse. But like all situations, this current economic reality will also pass, and nursing's economic and employment landscape will also change.
Lucky and blessed to myself have an interesting (but not terribly well-paying) job, I wish these new grads luck, and hope that they can navigate these current waters with grace and a modicum of patience.
Every nurse deserves a job, and every patient deserves a well-educated and well-paid nurse. My hope is that this current crop of new grads will find the employment they need, the experience they desire, and rest assured that they have chosen their new career well, no matter the current economic conditions.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
A Visiting Nurse and the Puzzle of Humanity
Last night, I was doing some visits for the visiting nurse agency who recently employed me. On my fourth and final visit, I had a revelation of sorts.
I drove about twenty minutes to reach this patient's home, winding through lovely country roads, past old farm houses and pastures. Reaching his neighborhood of middle- and upper middle-class homes, I was struck by how out of the ordinary this situation seemed to me. For the last eight years, almost all of my home visits have been to poor, inner-city neighborhoods, trailer parks, or lower income neighborhoods with modest single family homes. Not since I was a visiting nurse back in the late 90's had I actually visited a patient whose home reminded me, perhaps, of my own parents' home back in the day.
The home smelled of garlic, tomato sauce and stewing summer squash from a large garden in the back yard. An above-ground pool bubbled outside, and we sat on a relatively new overstuffed sofa, our feet on plush carpet, a rambunctious four-month-old yellow lab entering and exiting the room every few minutes. My patient's wife buzzed around the kitchen and dining room, setting the table and trying to usher the dog away from my bag of bandages and supplies.
My patient and I talked about his work with a medium-sized company, his recent surgery, and how his wound had been healing. Like sitting with a benign uncle in a comfortable living room (with the exception that I was actually dressing a surgical wound), we chatted about dogs, our adult children, and a few other random subjects.
At the end of the visit, I put away my supplies and washed my hands, readying to take my leave as dinner was reaching the well-laid table. It was such a familiar scene---familiar in a visceral way, but unfamiliar in terms of the home environments into which I've been accustomed to walking in the course of my nursing career.
I felt no judgment of my patient and his lifestyle. In some ways, it smacked of American middle-class privilege, but I had no idea of knowing from this brief encounter what this man and his family might think about the poor. Perhaps they give money regularly to progressive social causes and volunteer at the local food bank. Maybe one of his children works for a left-wing NGO or humanitarian organization. Maybe they support the Republican National Committee. Who knows?
Before, during and after this visit, the main focus of my awareness was on class, privilege, and the fact that I have so rarely had the opportunity to visit patients in such comfortable and middle-American surroundings.
I'm not sure how I feel about this demographic shift, although I still do visits to rooming houses and low-income buildings in our area. Having mostly eschewed my work in the nearby inner city, I am now evaluating this new manifestation in my professional life and how it effects me on an emotional, spiritual and psychological level.
Choosing currently to work as a visiting nurse in our much less ethnically diverse collegiate area (which in turn is surrounded by middle- and upper-middle class neighborhoods, small towns and semi-rural suburbs), I am acknowledging my certain sense of "compassion fatigue" and burnout that I experienced working with the poorest of the poor in the city for the better part of a decade, and my slow adjustment to a new class paradigm.
For almost ten years, my professional identity (and to some extent my personal identity, as well), was wed to the notion that I worked in service to the poor, advocating and fighting for them to receive the best quality health care that I could coerce and squeeze from the system. Stepping out of that environment---at least temporarily---I'm struck by the stark differences of class and privilege that I witness, and I simply acknowledge to myself that yes, this is assuredly different.
So, patients come and patients go. They are all of one class or another, all born into some situation or another, their class, race and social status beyond their control. I am simply noting the differences, evaluating my response, and cultivating an awareness that allows me to sit with each person, look them in the eye, and meet them face to face, hopefully without judgment or preconceptions.
Nursing brings one into contact with the diversity of humanity. This diversity of humanity is a wonder to behold, and in one's relationship to that wonder, one can also find a many puzzles to ponder.
I drove about twenty minutes to reach this patient's home, winding through lovely country roads, past old farm houses and pastures. Reaching his neighborhood of middle- and upper middle-class homes, I was struck by how out of the ordinary this situation seemed to me. For the last eight years, almost all of my home visits have been to poor, inner-city neighborhoods, trailer parks, or lower income neighborhoods with modest single family homes. Not since I was a visiting nurse back in the late 90's had I actually visited a patient whose home reminded me, perhaps, of my own parents' home back in the day.
The home smelled of garlic, tomato sauce and stewing summer squash from a large garden in the back yard. An above-ground pool bubbled outside, and we sat on a relatively new overstuffed sofa, our feet on plush carpet, a rambunctious four-month-old yellow lab entering and exiting the room every few minutes. My patient's wife buzzed around the kitchen and dining room, setting the table and trying to usher the dog away from my bag of bandages and supplies.
My patient and I talked about his work with a medium-sized company, his recent surgery, and how his wound had been healing. Like sitting with a benign uncle in a comfortable living room (with the exception that I was actually dressing a surgical wound), we chatted about dogs, our adult children, and a few other random subjects.
At the end of the visit, I put away my supplies and washed my hands, readying to take my leave as dinner was reaching the well-laid table. It was such a familiar scene---familiar in a visceral way, but unfamiliar in terms of the home environments into which I've been accustomed to walking in the course of my nursing career.
I felt no judgment of my patient and his lifestyle. In some ways, it smacked of American middle-class privilege, but I had no idea of knowing from this brief encounter what this man and his family might think about the poor. Perhaps they give money regularly to progressive social causes and volunteer at the local food bank. Maybe one of his children works for a left-wing NGO or humanitarian organization. Maybe they support the Republican National Committee. Who knows?
Before, during and after this visit, the main focus of my awareness was on class, privilege, and the fact that I have so rarely had the opportunity to visit patients in such comfortable and middle-American surroundings.
I'm not sure how I feel about this demographic shift, although I still do visits to rooming houses and low-income buildings in our area. Having mostly eschewed my work in the nearby inner city, I am now evaluating this new manifestation in my professional life and how it effects me on an emotional, spiritual and psychological level.
Choosing currently to work as a visiting nurse in our much less ethnically diverse collegiate area (which in turn is surrounded by middle- and upper-middle class neighborhoods, small towns and semi-rural suburbs), I am acknowledging my certain sense of "compassion fatigue" and burnout that I experienced working with the poorest of the poor in the city for the better part of a decade, and my slow adjustment to a new class paradigm.
For almost ten years, my professional identity (and to some extent my personal identity, as well), was wed to the notion that I worked in service to the poor, advocating and fighting for them to receive the best quality health care that I could coerce and squeeze from the system. Stepping out of that environment---at least temporarily---I'm struck by the stark differences of class and privilege that I witness, and I simply acknowledge to myself that yes, this is assuredly different.
So, patients come and patients go. They are all of one class or another, all born into some situation or another, their class, race and social status beyond their control. I am simply noting the differences, evaluating my response, and cultivating an awareness that allows me to sit with each person, look them in the eye, and meet them face to face, hopefully without judgment or preconceptions.
Nursing brings one into contact with the diversity of humanity. This diversity of humanity is a wonder to behold, and in one's relationship to that wonder, one can also find a many puzzles to ponder.
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