Where Have All the Nurses Gone?
I know I whine a lot about MTs being the first and hardest-hit casualties in a budget crunch (and I wasn't even around with you vets who were relegated to the supply room downstairs next to the morgue because MTs have always been so highly respected), but obviously, that's my reality and it's hard to see beyond your world when you're struggling to simply survive. With all the talk of the economic stimulus package and how much of an impact it will really have on real people, you pretty much have to poke your head up and see how everyone else is doing. End result is that I've had a little wake-up call this week to give me even more to feel pessimistic about.
Those of you who decry the bastardization of what was supposed to be our representative (AAMT is long dead--it's every MT for herself) and advocate channeling our indignation into organizing a union are, in my humble opinion, dreamers. Cats lend themselves to herding better than MTs, and with most of us working harder than ever for less money than ever, there's not a lot of incentive to volunteer our precious time to any extracurricular activities. We are long past the point of no return. The ship has sailed. MT is fading fast and it's all about automation, baby. Yadayadayada and so forth.
What has reinforced my rosy outlook, you ask? If I have to pick one thing, it might be this message board thread. I can't even distill it into a pithy Reader's Digest version, so I hope you do go and read at least the first post. The gist is that MTs may have simply served as the canary, dying in the mines to warn the rest of the healthcare system that something Bad is swooping in. Obviously, executive bonuses are as big a problem in our world as they are on Wall Street, but I was naïve enough to believe that nurses--people with a strong union, fer cryin' out loud--were probably safe from all this. Apparently, nothing could be further from the truth. Nurses are hurting. Budgets are shrinking, nursing staff is dwindling, nurse-to-patient ratios are growing, and they are leaving the field in droves--if not bailing out of the acute care scene for an easier life in private practice, simply leaving nursing altogether. One poster here claims 50% of nurses have left already (sorry, I'm too pressed for time to research that figure, but it's not hard to believe). These are people who are crucial to the system--the backbone, if you will. Anyone who's ever been in the hospital knows you're lucky to see a doctor for three minutes a day; it's the nurses who do the work, which means everything from monitoring vital signs to scrubbing Granddad's butt when he's been incontinent to simply connecting with an anxious patient as a human being. I thank a nurse for my son's life, because she recognized he was septic when no one else did. The fact that nurses even need a union to fight for their due is obscene.
Heck, when someone asks my opinion for a field to get into, I've always recommended nursing. I've nudged my own daughter that way. It's a field that should always be secure, right? It pays well, especially in comparison to other jobs these days. It comes with great benefits and perks. It's got to be a soul-satisfying job--you're not selling someone junk they don't need, you're providing something society really needs and values, right? It's something that can't be outsourced (oops--not so fast there. . . imported nurses are gaining a huge foothold in hospitals in some markets) and it's a job that you can do anywhere in the country, yes? In our area, nurses are so desperately needed that the local public hospital is helping to pay your way through vo-tech, getting you into a job after only three months' training so you can earn as you learn, and even buying up property around the hospital to provide affordable housing to its employees. Great deal, huh?
It seems I have to rethink that now. I've seen how hospitals are breaking under the weight of uninsured patients using the ERs as their only source of primary care. Indigent care has been the demise of many hospitals already, leaving large communities with no public hospital at all. Well-insured patients get the lowest negotiated rates, indigents get totally free care, and the rest of us who either have to pay cash or find our so-called health insurance covers next to nothing are charged the highest rates of all, to take up the slack. (Honestly, what use is insurance that has a $6000 deductible and cap of $80K when a single catastrophic injury can add up to twice that amount?) Doctors, like nurses, are sick of the rigamarole and cookbook medicine they're forced to practice in hospitals (honestly, if there's a strict protocol for every condition, why don't they just use that tech support in India since they love those savings?) and are retreating to private practice. And now, I see that nurses are just as abused as everyone else.
When the foundation of our healthcare system is breaking down, it's time for someone to just scrap the whole system and start over. When you do the research, you see that every other developed country in the world values its people enough to treat health care as a right, not a privilege. Even not-so-swift countries (Cuba anyone?) provide better, cheaper care to every citizen. What is wrong with this system is that we are sheep. Too many people believe the nonsense that universal healthcare = socialism and the end of society as we know it. I bet dollars to doughnuts that sentiment has been fostered by the people who stand to lose the most if we get it: Big Pharma and the insurance industry.
Other countries are run by governments that are afraid of their citizens. When those people are not happy, they protest. Where all of France stages a walkout, government listens. In the US, however, we've lost our rebellious nature. Maybe we've just allowed ourselves to be distracted with celebrity gossip and reality teevee. We have become complacent and afraid of our government. Sure, we can rally a bit of support to "Throw the bums out!" at election time, but I don't see the level of outrage necessary to demand the kind of representation we pay for. We need to become outraged, proactive, and ready to make some demands of our own. There are bankers who have burned through millions of dollars in bailout money, haven't changed the way they do business, and are demanding more. In the meantime, 95% of the country is suffering, including the people we rely on for our most basic needs.
I am just astounded that nursing in particular--and all of health care in general--are not even safe from what's happening. It's not just about MTs anymore, and woe to us all if someone doesn't fix this.