!Skeleton crews
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agk's phlog
22 May 2021 @ 2027
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written on x61 after work
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Some days, management offers $20 more per hour to
nurses who pick up and nobody's interested. I'm
usually already scheduled those days, on the floor,
interested or not, for base pay--no bonus.
Staff who pick up are exhausted. They worked the
night before then stayed for bonus pay. They're
far from their home units and home shifts, on
unfamiliar turf. We're a skeleton crew, a raggedy
bunch--spread thin in both senses.
Eight hours into my shift someone no-call, no-
shows to my unit. I'm scheduled to move to another
unit but can't. That would leave my ten patients
with no staff. I tell first shift on the girls'
unit I'm waiting for relief and will be there when
he comes. First shift stays late; he never comes.
There's a chain reaction of other people swapping
units so none are uncovered. The kids' unit gets
left with just a nurse for hours. There's a new
admission. There are behavior problems.
Hospitals are bought by private equity firms and
rolled up into conglamerates, managed by deskworkers
in other states who have never been to what they
manage. They exploit people who need care and people
who care.
They staff down to the wire. The US has way less
hospital beds per thousand population than we did
in the 1970s, less than any European country--and
way, way less than China.
Management should allow admissions to admit less
patients til we hire, train, and retain the staff to
care for them--which takes time! Otherwise they burn
staff. There's churn, low morale, and turnover while
healthcare workers seek a place to work that doesn't
do this.
