Just a reminder that this isn’t caused by lack of nurses. This is caused by a lack of salary, and a lack of support staff being hired.
Don’t forget being treated like absolute shit by people who think browsing YouTube on the toilet is “doing research”.
Just like teachers.
I’m so tired. Just trying to get to Thanksgiving break at this point.
12 hour shifts certainly isn’t helping any either.
Knew some nurses that did 3 12s and then had 4 days off. Seems like it could be nice on one hand.
My neighbor works in the NICU. She does 3 12s. She then does two more for the overtime pay. I don’t think she’s the exception anymore.
It’s horrible to watch someone burnout just to support their family…
Until it ends up being 5 12s in a row becsuse they are understaffed…
This is me!
The 3 on, 4 days off, 4 days on, 3 days off cycle of 12 hour shifts is what I do as in-home health care for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities!
And as a manager, I absolutely do get stuffed into covering 5 or more days. During the pandemic I was doing front half days (Sunday Monday Tuesday) back half nights (Wednesday Thursday Friday). And it’s hell!
They increased our pay to $15 an hour in my state as an emergency order so we could finally get some staff, but it’s impossible to get enough people and don’t even talk to me about quality…
TO $15/hr? Jesus, I hope you live in a low cost of living area.
I do but not low enough for this.
but you’ll get called-in for mandatory ot on day one off of four; which then turns into a back-to-back. then for good measure, your last day off will be cut short as you’re called-in early.
12 hour shifts aren’t all that terrible, as long as you actually get off on time and are paid well for working the appropriate amount of time (whether that’s 3/4/4/3 or 5/2/2/5, or 2/2/3/2/2/3, or any other schedule that gets you close to the standard hours per week). I’ve done 12s for about a decade, and haven’t had any problems with it aside from occasionally running into schedule issues because it’s hard to predict what day you’ll be working/off without calculating which week of the pay period it is.
It all returns to how much work you have to do in those 12 hours. Having even a few minutes of downtime repeatedly throughout a shift has been going the way of the dodo, and that’s going back to the original point of poor pay and fewer people to do everything needed.
100% correct. I am a nurse who hasn’t worked for 3 years because of childcare costs
a friend used to be a nurse. still works in health care, but in admin instead. stable (and flexible) hours, better pay, and has been able to work from home since before wfh became a hotbed topic (several years before covid, due to space issues at the facility at the time).
Funny how it’s the most compassionate of us that are fucked the hardest by capitalism
It’s interesting because in terms of the amount of school/time you need to invest, nursing is a pretty good job. You can become an LPN in less time than it takes to get an Associate’s and then make $50k starting out. RNs can get 70-80k starting out, although some states have raised educational requirements so that you need a Bachelor’s.
You can make that much but in places they don’t. I worked as a radiology aide and an OR aide at a local hospital when I was in college, thought about pursuing nursing as both of my parents are nurses. Two years there and one year of pre nursing in college and I thought “why am I going into this career? I get treated like crap by those above me and the patients, I get no support from my supervisors, I come home every day tired and complaining about work, and the stuff I bitch about is stuff my dad says has been happening since the hospital opened in the 70s” I got a degree in history and now I work as a PM for a contracting company that specializes in historic preservation, making more than I ever would as a nurse and I go to work and go home everyday in a pretty good mood.
If everyone working in the hospital wasn’t being treated like shit then I probably would be a nurse today but my time at the hospital was a huge eye opener.
This is what happens when the disparity in wealth continues to grow.
Well, people keep voting for political candidates who want to change nothing…so…
