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I’m the nurse who called 911 for help with staffing

by ystad on 11/10/22, 12:43 PM with 168 comments

• by thomastjeffery on 11/10/22, 3:17 PM

  Note that in its statement, the hospital had nothing to say about the concerns she laid out in the article. The only thing they care about is turnover. I do recognize that was the phrasing of the question they were responding to, but it's abundantly clear how out of touch they are. No mention of breaks. No mention of mental health. Just money and networking.

  > We’re told, “You make good money. You chose this career. If you don’t like it, why don’t you just quit?”

  That's the only question they can think to ask. The only way a nurse can make any impact in the institution is to walk away. The institution has turned a deaf ear to literally everything else.

  Anyone with half a brain can see how to fix this problem. Give nurses a stable and manageable job, and they will take it. It's not complicated.

  But the institution knows that they don't have to. Nurses will go through hell for their patients. So naturally, the institution will hold patients hostage to essentially blackmail nurses into maximum productivity.

  We can't expect nurses to go on strike. That's asking people who pursued a career of empathy and literal healing to abandon their patients. Sure, we are in a desperate enough situation that strikes are happening, but as soon as they get the minimum amount of progress, collective action will stop.

  It's glaringly obvious what we need: regulation. Nurses must be free to step away from work without fear for their patients' health. Only then will they have a voice.

• by ClumsyPilot on 11/10/22, 1:19 PM

  In the same vein, British nurses are going on strike now over pay and understaffing. In UK government sets their salary, so this is like all nurses going on strike - what do you do if you need to gove birth? There will be bodies.

  The thing I don't understand - allegedly coservative government is capitalist to the core. So they can't hire enough nurses. Are they going to increase pay to hire more nurses? No. Capitalism for me but not for thee.

  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63561305

• by unsupp0rted on 11/10/22, 1:11 PM

  > When I called, the dispatcher sent my request to the local fire chief, who then reached out to me, asked how he could help, and then sent a crew over to help monitor the lobby, retake vitals on patients, and do a roll call to ensure our patient list was accurate. We were all incredibly grateful for their help.

• by nerdponx on 11/10/22, 1:22 PM

  At what point do we acknowledge that there is a systemic market failure and start trying to explore interventions and alternative arrangements? Hospitals are a public good, but hospital executives seem uninterested now in providing that good. So how do we fix that?

• by themodelplumber on 11/10/22, 1:02 PM

  It seems the quote marks might be there because 911 wasn't really called, but it was still very serious...

  If you work in walk-in emergency health care you tend to take calling actual 911 way more seriously than most people do from what I understand, even though some would say there's not a huge difference between calling emergency services (911) and calling emergency services (non-emergency line). It's a point of nuance and a lot of people will tell you--911 is for the big and bad, usually near-deadly situations.

  Anyway it's interesting that there really was a legitimately deadly serious situation in multiple ways, and this person who represents the circumspect nursing community seemingly took even more additional circumspect care in phoning it in. When a lot of people in such a situation would have probably given up much earlier and perhaps even lost their composure & ability to work completely.

• by jmclnx on 11/10/22, 1:34 PM

  > deploying innovative ways to attract and retain team members

  > Sign-on bonuses and loan forgiveness programs

  > Staffing incentives and shift premiums

  > Increasing investments in professional development and career pathways

  Doing everything except what is really needed, Real Pay Raises. All Sign-on bonuses do is incentive people to job hop. If you pay enough, people will stay.

• by willcipriano on 11/10/22, 1:29 PM

  Did I miss the part where the hospital was billed for the firefighters time? It's would be insanity to let them get away with this for free.

• by Aeolun on 11/10/22, 1:14 PM

  The response by the hospital is gold. You couldn’t get it any more perfectly meaningless if it was a layoff notice from Mark Zuckerberg.

• by jiveturkey42 on 11/10/22, 2:04 PM

  To add more context to the nursing profession, this case is in the back of the back of the mind of every single nurse:

  https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2022/03/25/radon...

• by iso1631 on 11/10/22, 1:16 PM

  Seems so weird to me to read that a request for extra medial staff would go to firefighters. Intellectually I know the US has a combined Firefighter/Paramedic crew, but it's still jarring to read it.

  Do other countries merge firefighting and ambulance functions or is it a US only thing?

• by ChoGGi on 11/10/22, 2:25 PM

  So the hospital's plan is to do everything they can, other than raising wages?

• by illuminerdy on 11/10/22, 1:15 PM

  I'm not criticizing for calling 911 for help, but wouldn't have calling another local hospital been a better option? The fire chief sending over his staff potentially leaves him short staffed. I can't imagine that a local fire department has that many people to spare.

• by siliconunit on 11/10/22, 2:05 PM

  Unhinged capitalism will be the cause of the most devastating global crisis that is just around the corner. You can see it very easily on a simplex plot, you cannot solve for anything useful, like global quality of life, when there are parameters that have infinites, ie infinite 'growth' bullshit. It's a closed system, limited planet. We need to find a better metric, and forget about 'getting rich, work all your life' crap, when you are dead you take few cubic meters of space including ground, all your real estate 'investing' and stress, they just end 6ft under.

• by neilv on 11/10/22, 1:11 PM

  > We’re told, "You make good money. You chose this career. If you don’t like it, why don’t you just quit?" [...] My response to them was, "Do you REALLY want nurses to 'just quit' if they don’t like their jobs? Think that one through a little further."

  Great response.