Reply #7: How would you address this crisis? [View All]

[Chan790]

I took from your post that you're a nurse (Please correct me if I misread that.) so how would you fix this cluster-problem? Every suggestion I've ever heard is dismissed just as quickly by someone else...but nobody ever asks a nurse, at least that I hear.

Someone says "We need to reduce patient-load by hiring more staff and capping patient:staff ratio.", someone else rebuts "We can't do that, it'll explode the already high cost of health-care."

Someone says "We need to make it easier to become a nurse.", someone else rebuts "We shouldn't, we're talking about patient's lives and it should be difficult." (I'd agree.)

Someone says "The number of nurses isn't the issue, nurses are now being asked to do tasks that typically were done be others (both orderlies and doctors) and those tasks need to be restored to traditional providers.", someone else rebuts "That re-delineation and streamlining in personnel keeps costs down which, in turn, makes it possible to serve the uninsured and poor."

I think we need to remove roadblocks to becoming a nurse. I know several people with non-medical degrees who would gladly go back to school to become a health care professional (either a nurse or a technician/service-provider of some sort) if were accessible to them in terms of being affordable and workable. It seems to me that the best way would be free or extremely-low cost education in exchange for long-term commitments. i.e. We send you to school for free (or create training programs in the hospitals) and you agree to work here after graduation for 5 years. But...everybody seems to oppose that idea for myriad reasons.