I think she makes good enough money. I think that she would easily leave the job she is at, as I stated, for a safer working environment. The job she is at is not safe due to critical staffing issues. Patient safety can and does suffer from it.. In fact, as I stated previously in this thread, she just interviewed for a job that is much safer for her, patients, and everyone involved. She's willing to take it pay cut for this job and will have to. The reason she's willing to take the pay cut is so that she won't be as stressed out constantly due to the fact that she is so critically understaffed. I'm going to edit the post to add a little bit extra. As I've stated previously, I think that adding 10% to pay would help increase staffing and keep people, while also decreasing reliance upon travel nursing. As others have stated in this thread, travel nurses show up and kind of help with the workflow, but don't take on the full responsibility of a typical full-time worker. They also are able to typically dictate things as far as their schedule and freedoms go. Also, as I've stated in this thread previously, that 10% raise or so, would allow for the hospital to increase its full-time nursing staff by probably 20%. You would hope that most of those people would even stay. This is one simple way to help better staffing and patient outcomes. That executives refuse to acknowledge. That's why I am thoroughly behind advocating for an increase in pay. As I've stated previously, it boils down to a simple law of supply and demand. You want good workers that do their job well. You want to retain those workers? You need to treat them well and pay them well. Especially in the era that we are in currently. I'll also add that the nurses you saw that didn't seem stressed and were just going about their job. We're probably just good at their job, which also means they were good at hiding their true feelings in front of you.
Are we talking about nurses from Minnesota specifically? The anecdotal comments you made earlier.......were those nurses from Minnesota?
How many hours per week are they working? And how long have they been an RN? According to glassdoor, RN's in Houston make an estimated salary of $86k with an additional $20k of overtime. Indeed has the average salary of an RN with 6-9 years of experience at $41/hr; adding in overtime would reasonably make the total compensation around 6 figures. It depends on the comparison being made. Earlier, I think the comparison was a coal miner. I think we can all agree that, as physically taxing as nursing may be, it's nowhere near that of a coal miner.
I haven't heard of any nursing situation where they don't deserve the working conditions being fought for from the MN. nurses. They also deserve the money being asked for from the MN nurses. Their work is more difficult and easily as valuable as the work of the executives of the hospital that make many times the salaries of the nurses.
There are staff shortages which means the nurses do extra duties, safety concerns, shift schedules, etc. They want extra security, mental health care, and higher pay wages. They are suffering from PTSD. The lack of staff and extra duties means that the patients have longer wait times as well. The nurses are so desperate that they are striking even without a strike fund. So they are losing pay to make their point. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minnesota-nurses-strike-mary-turner-hospitals/ https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/09/12/behg-s12.html
So their biggest demands are increased staffing (to what extent?) and increased pay. In the eyes of their employer, that translates into "more pay for less work". What's your stance on universal health care?
I support universal health care, but that is a separate issue than the nurses' demands for working within our current health care system.
Why is it separate? If we move towards universal health care, won't the wages of health care workers fall? Surely you can't believe that the nurses' demands have merit in our current health care system but wouldn't in a universal health care system? But with regards to the Minnesota strike, the talking points are easy to support, but without knowing the number of additional staff to be hired or the scope of the workplace improvements, it's hard for me to make an informed opinion.
It is a separate issue, because the whole thing will be restructured. It would mean lower wages, but they also wouldn't have anything for insurance deducted from their paychecks. We don't know the structuring of how it would work so it is all unknown and can't be discussed with any accuracy at this point.
You deal with a fattie patient and you're a 130 lb. woman that's a RN. Some of the more modern facilities have machines that are attached to the ceiling that can assist in lifting your obese patients without necessarily causing a nurse or a team of medical staff to slip a disc just to take said fattie into the imaging department to get a MRI which isn't as effective as the fattie's fat makes it harder to get an accurate diagnosis of what's going on inside of them compared to your more health conscientious individuals when getting a MRI. That's just an example, as not all hospital facilities or floors have this type of ceiling machinery to assist a RN or team of medical staff to assist an obese patient in the hospital. I would not be surprised to see this as a legitimate concern among the nursing staff participating in the strike. They also always run the risk of contamination from whatever bloodwork they may be getting from a patient's care. Typically there is a trash bin exclusively for things like syringes in each hospital bed, but accidents do happen where a person in the room slips and gets jabbed by a syringe accidentally when their hand slips into the trash bin full of used syringes. You may get lucky as the patient whose syringe you accidentally pierced yourself with isn't carrying say any of the Hep alphabets, but you may not get lucky and unfortunately contract something you didn't even the get fun in contracting from say sharing needles or good old fashion ****ing. Instead you get ****ed for doing your job and having a propensity for being clumsy at unfortunate times, while only possibly, maybe, earning a six figure salary. I know I personally wouldn't accept a life altering disease for only six figures. But you argue this against RNs and really any healthcare worker, which would include housekeeping which cleans these ******* hospitals too and runs every bit the risk that actual medical staff deal with too. Stupid **** in my opinion. I personally have never understood others thinking their opinion is so great that they should be arbiters of how much someone should make. If your ability to negotiate is so well versed that you can earn more than the median average in your career, I say more power to you and more people should be just like yourself. I know living in Texas, there's roughly $1.9 trillion to $2 trillion dollars that circulates in this state's economy. And yet, 18% of the population is at the poverty level with an undefined percentage one major healthcare complication away from entering poverty themselves. The number of uninsured in my state despite having roughly 4.2-4.3% unemployment rate in 2022, is 4.3 million out of a total population of 29,700,000ish Texan residents total. So while you feel content to argue semantics like a trolly **** that people on this forum continue to get baited by, which I won't fall prey to after this post, I don't personally give a **** if RNs in MN are able to negotiate their salaries and benefits in excess of $150k or $200k a year, if they were able to. I'm sure the doctors would mind as it would insult their annual salary despite the enormous gap in education, debt and underpaid clinical residencies it took to get there compared to becoming a RN, to which I'd say MDs and DOs, you better develop the negotiation skills of these RNs that are well versed in being able to earn more for themselves because they're that good of negotiators. The truth is, there's plenty circulating in this nation's economy, especially in the ****ing healthcare industry to go around. MDs should not be telling what RNs should make because it might bruise your egos. You earn what you're able to negotiate and if it's above the median, then more power to you I say.
The other nations have differing ways of dealing with their universal healthcare. It isn't the same amongst them. We don't have a solid idea what it would be like in the United States.
Why can't orderlies be asked to help? If you're going to argue that the compensation should be tied to risk, how do you reconcile that against jobs that are inherently more dangerous (i.e. electricians, construction workers, coal miners, etc...)? Agree. Shoot for the moon, and get what you can, but one should be realistic about his/her expectations.
Staff shortage. That's one of the complaints. The expectation that a 130. lb RN may alone have to deal with a 600. lb patient that needs to be taken to get a MRI is not a possibility only permitted in Science Fiction. It's a likely reality, especially in the good old USA, including the state of Minnesota. Jobs that are more dangerous should be paid more too. Negotiate these facts to your employer and see if they bite. If you put out good work and the stats back up your value, and it's worth more to retain you compared to letting you go, you'll probably get that raise. IBEW Journeymen Electricians in the Austin area earn $41.30/hr not including all the OT going on in a heavily construction state like Texas, where OT is typically common, whereas the average salary for an electrician is about $26/hr in Texas. And that's in an at will state with abysmal union regulations whose best interests are to that of employers instead of employees typically.
Like I said before, we don't know the scope of the additional staff request so I can't make an informed opinion.. However, I do think it undermines your point when you keep referring to outliers as the basis of your argument. It's the nature of supply and demand. If your wage is already competitive to the industry, and you can be easily replaced, you probably won't get that raise.
Trolls in 2022 are trash these days. Especially Steph Curry fanboys on a Houston Rockets message board.
Try to work on your reading comprehension. You stated "600 lb patient". That's an outlier. Are you aware that it's possible to get muscular strains and sprains from job-related activities not involving 600 pound patients?
Glad you changed it from "college" to "Trump University". That hw assignment would've assuredly received a failing mark at a college.....but maybe a passing grade at Trump University.
