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From: Dr. Pezzi (I am NOT anti-nurse!)
Category:
Nursing
Date: 16 Apr 2005
Time: 09:15:35 -0400
Remote Name: 69.39.75.252
You must not have read through my entire site. In it, I have both critical and complimentary things to say about nurses, but also doctors, paramedics, and politicians. The one group that I almost always bash is hospital administrators. If you don't hate them now, you likely will in a few minutes. I once had a boss who referred to nurses and other non-physician staff as "the help." He instructed me not to eat with them. I discussed more of this story elsewhere, so I won't repeat all the details now. However, I thought that his opinion was ludicrous. As I've repeatedly made clear, in healthcare we all work as a team.
> When was the last time a doc actually obtained their own vs on a patient?
I'd do that in the ER whenever possible. If I wasn't busy, I would relieve the triage nurse so he/she could take a break, and I'd triage the incoming patients. This is a bit off-topic, but I found that this greatly expedited patient care. Incidentally, I belong to an emergency medicine discussion group, and some of the ER docs who experimented with this system (a doc working triage) reported similar benefits. This is not intended as a slam against nurses. If you look at the totality of my comments on nurses, I think that you would find that I do more to support the nursing profession than many nurses. For example: You mentioned that nursing is suffering from a severe shortage. That's true, and I have a much better plan to solve that problem than trying to suppress free speech. The solution to the nursing shortage is simple: pay nurses more, and implement other changes that would improve their working conditions (e.g., less patients per nurse). In a free-market economy, shortages are self-correcting because a shortage would (or SHOULD) enable practitioners of that profession to demand more money. Let's say that nursing salaries were doubled or tripled. That would solve the nursing shortage problem by drawing more people into nursing school, encouraging existing nurses to work more hours, and enticing many nurses who've left nursing to return to that profession. Their isn't any law stipulating a ceiling on nursing salaries. Do you know why nursing pay is kept artificially low? It's because of a collusion (tacit or otherwise) amongst hospital administrators. Their avaricious pea brains have an odd and indefensible fixation: that nurses are not worth more money, and they will be damned if they'll pay more. The economic value of nurses should be decided by the economy, not administrators who are hell-bent on limiting what nurses make and maximizing their workloads.
Although I could cite many facts in support of this, one way to illustrate the veracity of my sentiment about administrators is to look at what they've done to the nurses at Northern Michigan Hospital (NMH) in Petoskey, Michigan (not too far from where I live). The nurses there have been on strike for years. It's the longest nursing strike in Michigan history, and (I think) also in the world. The strike drags on because the NMH administrators have dug in their heels and resolved to vehemently fight their nurses even if that battle costs them far more than what the nurses wanted (and it has, because NMH had to pay astronomical wages to attract other nurses to fill in). Therefore, this is more than a monetary battle; it gives a glimpse of how some administrators loathe nurses and are obsessed with triumphing over them.
Some people might say that there isn't enough money to pay nurses more. Baloney. There is plenty of money, but it is being diverted to overpaid administrators, useless bureaucrats, lawyers (especially lawyers!), and even drug reps (pharmaceutical representatives). The latter can make far more money than doctors . . . for what? For using their pulchritude to get in the door, give the docs free pizza and pens, and deliver a spiel on the two drugs they know inside and out? It isn't easy to quantitate job difficulty, but I'd estimate that what drug reps do is ten times less important and difficult than what doctors do. I've known several drug reps, and their biggest headache seemed to be the annoyance of getting past the doctor's office staff (incidentally, they were so bitter about this that they referred to them as "window witches"). Compared to what I did in the ER, and compared to what nurses do, that was a walk in the park.