Posted on 01/09/2009 5:23:45 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
MILWAUKEE — Please, please accept a high-paying job with us. In fact, just swing by for an interview and we'll give you a chance to win cash and prizes.
Sounds too good to be true, especially in an economy riddled with job cuts in nearly every industry. But applicants for nursing jobs are still so scarce that recruiters have been forced to get increasingly inventive.
One Michigan company literally rolled out a red carpet at a recent hiring event. Residential Home Health, which provides in-home nursing for seniors on Medicare, lavished registered nurses and other health care workers with free champagne and a trivia contest hosted by game-show veteran Chuck Woolery. Prizes included a one-year lease for a 2009 SUV, hotel stays and dinners.
"We're committed to finding ways to creatively engage with passive job seekers," said David Curtis, president of the Madison Heights-based company.
Recruiters like Curtis may have little choice. The long-standing U.S. nurse shortage has led to chronic understaffing that can threaten patient care and nurses' job satisfaction, and the problem is expected to worsen.
The shortage has been operating since World War II on an eight- to 10-year cycle, industry experts say. Each time the number of nurses reaches a critical low, the government adds funding and hospitals upgrade working conditions. But as the deficit eases, those retention efforts fade and eventually the old conditions return, often driving nurses into other professions.
"We recently had a hiring event where, for experienced nurses to interview — just to interview — we gave them $50 gas cards," said Tom Zinda, the director of recruitment at Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare in the Milwaukee-area city of Glendale. "We really try to get as creative as we can.
(Excerpt) Read more at denverpost.com ...
Actually our healthcare system is being based on the assumption that receiving the world's best healthcare is a right whether or not it can be paid for. This is not the fault of corporations, the fault lies with those that have been pushing this agenda.
Just imagine that you showed up to work and your employer announced that he had a right to the output of your labor and no longer had to compensate you for it. How much effort would you invest with little or no reward? Not much. Hospitals are in the same situation, they need to save every dime they can because they receive nothing for millions in uncompensated services they are forced to provide.
How many factory worker jobs are out there in this recession paying $50,000+ to start.
I am talk ing about the working conditions and the treatment of nurses. Shift work, poor treatment by supervisors, and management and the engineering department, which is the medical. Most autoworkers get to 50 fairly quickly. Prison guards get to 100K quickly with ot. Most cops make well over 80 to 100 with overtime.
One can bleed for the 50 k as a nurse
Sounds like the natural equilibrium between the supply of nurses and the demand for them that would normally exist in a free market for healthcare has been short-circuited, probably by the entity that excels in short-circuiting markets: government.
There is no natural supply and demand. They treat nuring in increasingly cruddy fashions and nurses leave.
Since at least the 1960’s there has been a critical on going, unending Nursing Shortage.
My 52 Years of with the Nursing profession: My mom was Head Nurse Cedars in LA
Sister: RNBSN Cardiac Rehab North Ridge.
My Wife RNBSN Trauma Nurse ten years Desert Regional Hospital.
Mostly because women leave the profession in droves, not only to have children but to find more humane work.
Our Medical system could actually be saved by hiring enough nurses that allow them to work without the resulting burnout.
When we get to a government single payer system our nursing jobs will look like the ones in GB. We will have many less nurses available and much more to do.
Factory work? Hardly. My wife has been doing it for twenty years.
Your wife likes working in the factory.
LMHO!
Boy do you get it!
I’m a nurse too, secret, and I agree with Chicken.
Thank you. It is difficult for nurses to face that their working conditions for their skilled labor is similar to factor work.
The product is the health care porceedures and phycial care needed to provide an health care outcome.
Nurses are the factory floor workers
Charge is is the section supervisor
Supervisor is the Shift manager
Director of nursing is the overall manager of shop floor activities
MDs and DOs are engineers
PAs and NPs are engineering assistants
Education departmetn and compliace deptartments are essentially Legal
Admin is ...the same as every overhead operation in any factory
There are many problems within the profession, mostly the range of educational levels that are allowed to call themselves nurses and the lack of increase in salary to correspond to experience.
Minor problem here of course is that research shows that there is no difference in perfomance of the floor factory workers no matter what degree or diploma they have.
Each time the number of nurses reaches a critical low, the government adds funding and hospitals upgrade working conditions. But as the deficit eases, those retention efforts fade and eventually the old conditions return, often driving nurses into other professions.
Lucrative too, if you’re willing to put in the hours.
IMHO a lucrative career is not one that you are working your butt off with OT. That is factory work
A lucrative career is one that increases your pay over time.
Nurses start high and really go not much higher. It is pretty static across the board.
From my experience, Chickensoup is on the mark.
Thanks
the newer nurses all want to “go on” and become nurse practitioners or educators or some other......
they all want to go on not to be nurses but to be NursesPlus.
with good reason.
How many factory workers can do 2 more years past BSN and become nursing practioner or physician assistant?
Nurses can become Nurse pratitioners but they cannot beome PAs. at least nor in our neck of the woods. So they can go to Engineering and become an assistant. Ten times as much responsibliity and just as hard work for twice an nurses entry level salary ... at best?
Burnout became the norm.....and nurses eating their own ...became sport.
Factory work.
Funny, a local Medical center recently decided to streamline and cut costs and eliminated all the levels of nuring that had been so carefully won over the years in one swoop. So they were back to about four levels instead of all the expensive ladies who were overhead.
I did find work in L and D. I left to go to big pharm, praise the Lord.
And YOU my dear, are making money.
Saw a nurse surplus up my way when the Canadians went to single payer system. Many lost their jobs and bussed in from Canada each week. We were swimming in nurses.
Actually our healthcare system is being based on the assumption that receiving the world’s best healthcare is a right whether or not it can be paid for. This is not the fault of corporations, the fault lies with those that have been pushing this agenda.
We are rapidly turning into third world healthcare. Never leave someone you love in the hosptial. Have shifts of family to advocate, or hire a private nurse/advpcate.
Oh here in midwest/IL nurses can and often do become PAs—depends on what they want to do after they get their BSN—either become Nurse Pract. or PA. Daughter has been examined/treated by both—one a midwife who works for ob/gyn & one a PA that works for dermatologist, and they seem to have equal levels of expertise and responsibility.
That said, we may be spoiled—we have excellent health care facilities and personnel in my community, and I realize that may not be the norm.
I believe nurses in my town are making $50K to start in physician offices, more in hospitals, however, as said in post above, I live in a community that has good tax base, etc. to support excellent health care facilities.
I don’t know what prison guards in Illinois make. Demand for those are likely going to grow w/poor economy, but I would have mixed emotions if daughter wanted to to into that field.
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