Posted on 08/30/2021 12:01:27 PM PDT by Vendome
In the past month, four emergency room nurses ... have quit at the Eureka hospital where Matt Miele works.
Around California — and the nation — nurses are trading in high-pressure jobs for a career change, early retirement or less demanding assignments, leading to staffing shortages in many hospitals.
But burnout isn’t the only thing compounding California’s nursing shortage: The state’s new vaccine mandate for health care workers is already causing headaches for understaffed hospitals before it is even implemented. Some traveling nurses — who are in high demand nationwide — are turning down California assignments because they don’t want to get vaccinated.
Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order reinstating emergency provisions aimed at ensuring adequate staffing. In part, the order allows health care workers from out of state to work in California.
Before the pandemic, nursing shortages were common in most areas of the state, according to the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.
The staffing shortage is so severe that Scripps Health is considering temporarily consolidating some of its outpatient centers. Scripps...told CalMatters that it is serving nearly 20 percent more patients on average than before the pandemic.
“Out of ratio” means that a nurse is assigned too many patients. California is the only state that caps the number of patients that can be assigned to a single nurse. Under state requirements, for instance, an ICU nurse can have no more than two patients and an emergency room nurse, no more than four.
“One hospital told us they had 474 unvaccinated employees. They did a big education and incentive push. Only 12 people signed up,” said Richardson, the hospital association’s attorney.
(Excerpt) Read more at bakersfield.com ...
The ICU patient to nursing ration is 1:2 typically. There are certain assignments (CRRT / IABP etc) that are 1:1. And a really sick patient may be 2:1 Rn to 1 nurse. That is pretty rare.
This is not a union pushed thing, however RNs tend to be extremely liberal and have little compunction about walking out or striking in California. That being said, the RN shortage has existed LONG before any required mandates of vaccinations. Currently a traveling contract will pay 3 -5 x the amount of a standard staff RN contract by a hospital. Many nurses are leaving to travel — often getting assigned in their own hospital at far higher pay.
I do not believe for a minute that this is being exacerbated by “vaccine mandate”.
I have a friend who was NICU
She hated being pulled from NICU and going to E-room.
she quit and went back to Cana-duh
I work in an assisted living facility for vets. In the three years I've been there, the entire facility has NEVER been fully staffed...in ANY department (other than my department, Maintenance).
Like Australia.
I have 4 kids who are RNs or better. None of them will touch it, They are willing to live in their cars first.
Australia is not quite there yet, but close.
That is a nice little dip in the line graph but hardly “falling off a cliff.” If it continues, it will be.
It reminds me of the saying that those who can’t do the job in the real world end up teaching it, or something to that effect. Thinking back to college, the best professors I had with the adjunct ones who worked in their chosen field as a career and retired to teach a couple college classes. The worst ones were the ones that had never worked a day in their field and only knew what they read in textbooks, industry journals, etc.
Exactly. All of these people were loaded as heroes, our saviors, etc. Now it’s do what we say or your garbage.
171,000 to 41,000 is falling off a cliff.
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