Once promising nursing field is now getting raped by greedy capitalists

I find it interesting that whenever there is a boom for something it falls apart in a matter of years, wages driven down and the jobs dry up. The dot com bust from ten years ago was never really given a rationale as to why it happened. There is still tons of folks buy and selling products and services online.

THe reality of it is the nature of capitalism which is a huge pyramid scheme. It's not about creating a living for all but milking labor for profit whereas the worker becomes an object to be exploited much like a machine. They cease to be humans or treated like humans by those who own the corporation or run the system.

Nursing, a field that is all about dealing with humans, is now more than ever, becoming a very objectified field. Those that have retired from this field, have had their spouses laid off and pension lost are returning to this field in droves. At a lower rate of pay than they were getting before they left it. Nursing, for years, was talked about as the next boom sector of the economy.

Not anymore. A field that was advertised as a guarentee is now drying up like the .com boom. New grads in many areas of the country have no hopes of getting their foot in the door. It's much more cost effective to hire back and experienced 55-65 y/o nurse than to hire a new grad. A new grad requires a monetary investment to train which last about six months before they can work independently on the floor.

So how do these capitalist look to milk more profit out of this field? Take advantage of the recession!!!! Or shall we call it by it's proper term? The great restructuring where the capitalists fire everyone and try to get the few to work more and increase their production. TAKE WHAT YOU CAN AND GIVE NOTHING BACK!!!!!

I hate to break the news to everyone but nursing is now completely dried and is not recession (restructure) proof. This field, just like every other field, has gotten hit just as hard if not harder.

It's kind of a wonderful thing when people can come out of retirement and get work. Especially after their retirement accounts have been raided. You don't see that kind of respect for experience in other industries.

What's the raped part again? Experienced people getting jobs they know how to do?

Or the patient, who codes, if he survives it, depending on a 60 y/o RN being able to run to his bedside on time.

Not to mention many of the physical changes that occur with aging (ie vision when it comes to reading med lables and Drs orders) and the demands of the job. Nursing is a very physical field. These experinced nurses are not happy at all about having to go back. It takes wear and tear on your body being on your feet all day and rolling patients around.

It's back breaking work.

I'd take her bedside performance over anybody's.

But she gets some serious cash to fielding telephone calls from patients. I think that's great work for RNs who want to work but can't handle the heavy lifting. (BTW: Lots of pig flu calls I'm told.)

When I'm that age I doubt I'm gonna be that effective running to codes.

I'm usre she's good at what she does. I'm not arguing that. Generally, when you are talking about ER or Med Surge positions you want the staff to be a little younger.

Same nurses every day in my unit (clinical research). Head nurse was about 70. #2 was about 60. night nurse was about 50-60 and not really much of a nurse, more of a babysitter. day nurse had wine on her breath and was about 40. hot mama LPN about 40. CNA about 25 and a nursing student who was about 18-25.

medical problems(I have MS) many many years ago, they were importing nurses from other countries and paying them less than I was making. I wonder if they are still doing this.

since the recession began.

The retirees that are forced to come back are doing the job for about the same pay as those that came over from abroad. Not to mention the hospitals don't have to woo them in with bonuses.

cause their spouses got laid off.

I do believe I was quite clear on that.

Amazing how this board gets to be a game of telephone.

1 yr BSN program (for people with degrees in other fields). I still think Nursing is a great field if you want to go into the business end but I am taking note of all the jobless claims.

There's lots of opportunity. You'll get paid a lot less than when you left the field.

I know a lot of folks from the midwest that look at say NY or MA and see the pay at 75k and think the road is paved with gold. In NY 75K gets eatin out of your wallet really quickly.

If your a new grad you're pretty well fucked. Hospitals and Medical Facitilities now are not going to pay the money to train you at all. They'd rather take experienced nurses and pay them less. They know people right now are between a rock and a hard place.

I live near Bunker Hill Community College.

The military trys to recruit those nurses all the time. I got my ASN from there and they used to call me day and night.

Typically nurses are officers and start at 2nd Lt (O-1) and that requires a BSN. There are programs that will get you there that they will fund.

BTW, there really isn't much difference between the BSN and ASN. Both take the same licensure exam and have the same clinical time. You are both expected to know the same stuff.

They are both RNs.

http://www.goarmy.com/amedd/nurse/corps_specialties_requir.jsp

However, they do fund upgrade programs that lead to a BSN prior to enlistment. A friends daughter after a lot of looking is going that route and into Army in the trauma field.

You can still get in with an ASN.

I know plenty of folks that got in with just that.

They would not have made me an officer, and there are no enlisted RN's, at least not in the Air Force. Although I did have a bachelor's degree, it wasn't in nursing, so it didn't matter.

"You must have an associate's degree in nursing or a three-year nursing diploma or a bachelor of science in nursing for the Army Reserve; have a bachelor's degree in nursing (BSN) from an accredited school of nursing for Active Duty."

http://www.goarmy.com/RotcViewJob.do?id=315

There's not a big difference between the ASN and the BSN. That's why they don't discriminate against it all that much. You both have the same clinical time. I would even argue that most folks that have gotten the ASN (myself included) would telll you that it is a waste of time. The difference between the programs are minute. The pre reqs are the same except in the BSN program actually count toward the degree whereas the ASN are requirements to get into the program.

I got my ASN and found it to be a waste of time when I read what you needed for the BSN. Overall, it's a difference of about three classes. One of em is an elective (usually history) the other two are Statistics (Prereq for ASN) nutrution (nothing I didn't learn as an ASN) and pharmacology (nothing I didn't learn as an ASN).

Here's the UMASS Boston Site;

http://www.cnhs.umb.edu/nursing/programs/blended/Online/OnlineRN-BSCurriculum.html

Small town nursing home/rehab facility. I was surprised at what they want to pay me.

They also hired a new RN and we work well together since Newbie has recent updates on technology and meds, while Oldie has experience and knows what to sweat and what to not sweat.

We get paid practically the same, same as the other nurses there (they get minor raises over the yrs as well as COLA)

We have nursing schools, the nursing schools have waiting lists -- :wtf:

Oh yeah, public education at the community college level is being defunded. Duh.

Hekate

giving them 6k to get a place to live, money for a car and maybe even sign on bonuses is much less than the cost to train a new grad. Training a new grad can run a facility about 50k plus their hourly wage.

30k to bring someone over from overseas is a bargain in comparison.

It takes a toll on the country they are coming from as well if their Healthcare needs are not being met.


South Africa is getting brain drained pretty good. The money these hospitals and big medical groups are spending would go a long way to improving their situations over there. Unfortunatly the way things work these greedy capitalist pigs don't care about workers or human beings, they just care about the bottom line.

Many are almost refugees.

Requires a master's degree and the pay is awful.

I'm just now working on prerequisites to get into nursing school.

Then again, high pay was never my concern... I jsut want a way out of this country, and a hopefully stable job, that's it.

I'd definitely leave this 3rd world shithole country if I had the chance.

I'd like to go to Sweden, France, Denmark, etc.

of health care passed nurses will be in great demand as those people who have been without health care look to be seen.

Legislation has to passed to force these hospitale to be PRO ACTIVE and not REACTIVE in dealing with this shortage. And it's gonna come and hit everyone like a ton of bricks.

Wait till a few years go by and the retirees either die off or retire again. There aren't going to be enough experienced nurses to train those that are already out there. There are gonna be tons of med eras and long wait times because of it.

Obama can pass all the insurance reform he wants. It's not gonna change the position of these greedy fuck hospitals that have everyone by the balls lookin out for their bottom line.

Anything for those evil bastards to make a buck.

UTMB is still paying big incentives to recruit nurses. They just hired over 100 in a big summer campaign.

Some HR folks were just talking about that.

I heard they overhauled their malpractice laws in that state. They had gotten a few apps from there and don't trust em given that you lisence is less likely to get fucked up if you screw up there vs the rest of the country.

The problem is, you get your experience in Texas, you might find yourself stuck there.

The dot com bust from ten years ago was never really given a rationale as to why it happened. There is still tons of folks buy and selling products and services online.

As a computer scientist who worked in IT through the bust I can tell you precisely what happened.

In the late 90s, two important things happened:

1) There was a huge expenditure of funds to prepare for the Y2K bug. A lot of money was spent honestly on this problem, but I personally witnessed a lot of money being spent to upgrade unrelated IT infrastructure under the pretense of Y2K fixes. It was a beautiful excuse for IT departments to make needed upgrades on anything and everything, and blame it on "Y2K". All this fueled a huge boom in IT-related hiring and spending all on its own.

2) The Internet happened. Suddenly, mainstream Americans could "get online", connecting for the first time directly to a global network instead of dialing up individual computer bulletin board systems. Lots and lots and lots and lots of people saw this and wanted to find a way to make money off of it, but most of these people did not have one single clue about computers. Anyone who could put together a semi-plausible-sounding business plan could get funding and went off to hire anyone and everyone who could spell "HTML" in their resume. Start-ups spent venture capital like it was going out of style, hiring anyone who plausibly sounded like they knew something about computers. Most of these businesses had no idea how to actually make money from computers, they simply assumed that if it had something to do with computers it would make money.

After Y2K came and went, so did all the Y2K-related expenditures (and other expenditures that were made with Y2K as an excuse). This alone took a huge amount of wind out of the dot-com sails.

But by this time also many of the start-ups were running out of venture capital, and had nothing to show for it except fancy offices with pool tables and designer chairs. Suddenly many of these start-ups found themselves having to actually consider cost-cutting measures to survive. The worst of the incompetents in the field would begin to be shed.

Then 9/11 came. The blow to the economy was huge. Money dried up as investors started taking a hard look at what they were investing in and whether it actually had a plausible way of making money, and found that most did not. The mystique of "anything computers" started to fade away as people began to understand them better.

And so collapsed the dot-com bubble.

6:30 a.m. I wake up, roll over, and look at alarm clock. There is absolutely no reason to be up this early, but sleeping habits have always been rough for me.
I had the dream again where I’m at my graduation ceremony. It clings to my mind as I try to roll out of bed like a cobweb I walked through in a dusty, dusky barn.

We’re all wearing our mortarboards and look so happy just to have made it. The ladies in my class are spending a half hour in the bathroom before we are ushered onstage, primping for the best of reasons: they hadn’t really had the time to do so since starting school. Us guys are just standing around and joking about what great jobs we are going to find, the lives we will save, and how our wives/fiancees/girlfriends/whatever are going to be glad to actually spend time with us again.
My mom is there and beaming while chatting on the phone with every nurse she has a number for in her phonebook. She wants the world to know that there will now be two nurses with our last name.
The ceremony itself is a blur. For a second, there is a slideshow. For a moment, a speech. I’m not sure how this paper got in my hands.
After we all get our diplomas, hug a favorite teacher (usually in tears), the whole class shuffles outside for pictures and is full of hope. There are promises to stay in touch, talk about networking for future jobs, scheduling for playdates for kids, and even invitations given out to a wedding. One new grad talks about how she desperately needs cash for a down payment on the house of her dreams, but six months ago, her cousin got a $5K signing bonus as a nurse... HOPE! HOPE! HOPE!

But that’s not why I get out of bed. I actually don’t have a good reason to leave my apartment today.
Or this week.
Or the foreseeable future.

6:45 a.m. I’m on the treadmill. Angry rock streams through my iPod this morning. I used to work out to happy music, but lately, it has been a steady diet of guys who only know three chords on their guitars and have a severe distortion on their microphone.
It pumps me farther.
I’m pretty well convinced my frustration and anger at five months of unemployment fuels the desire for this crap, not the other way around. Who wouldn’t be frustrated?
Lately, I feel like I’ve been lied to. I turn up the speed of the machine. I need to get back in shape.
I neglected too many parts of my life for school.

7:30 a.m. Shower. With no job to go to and no interviews in the last few weeks, why do I bother? Sure, it feels good to cool down, but who am out to impress?
I guess I need to look sharp and not smell like a lobster’s armpit, just in case someone panicking comes pounding on my door, desperately searching for anyone who knows CPR for their kids.
BANG-BANG! “Help! My twins aren’t breathing! Oh god! Isn’t anyone on this floor a nurse!?!?”
I could make the newspaper! “Courageous Unemployed Nurse saves Congressman’s daughters!” the headline would read. And tomorrow afternoon, the CNO of that Level 1 trauma center down the road will call. She’ll start barking high salary numbers at me, like some livestock auctioneer on meth.
Better use the good soap today.
http://allnurses.com/nursing-articles/day-life-new-418404.html

They're in enough demand to make some of their own. If they all took a stand against the union-busting hospitals and clinics, the profession may stand a fighting chance.

anti-capitalist crap

capitalism is NOT a pyramid scheme. it CREATES wealth in the longterm. any look at wealth #'s shows this to be true. heck, fwiw, socialism can grow wealth too. neither is a zero sum game.

If what I posted is "anti capitalist rubbish".

If it isn't the profit motive (no one is arguing that capitalism doesn't create wealth. It does, for a select few) that keeping these hospitals from hiring new grads then what is it?

Oh, the really care about you getting the best care you can get at their facility. I got more news for you, THIS IS GOING TO FUCK EVERYONE IN THE ASS.

Cept for the guys running these hospitals and profitting off of them.

If they do not hire new grads just how are the newer nurses supposed to get experience? The experienced nurses will have;

A) Died off.

b) Gone back into retirement.

C) Be too old to precept and quit if forced to do it.

That's going leave all the medical facilites with no choice but to close up shop or finally hire new grad nurses and put them into areas where the training is lackluster and they won't know what they are doing. It is specificly the profit motive that is creating this mess. It is capitalism and this is how the system works. It doesn't care about long term social or public health repurcussions. Not to mention whether or not you put food on your table.

It's about spending the minimum and getting the maximum financial return. What a wonderful way to run a healthcare system. You're life is in the hand of not only the insurance companies but also the hospital admins that are cutting corners on everyones health care.

And one of us will be very happy to serve you in the emergency department (Provided we remember what we learned all those years ago in nursing school becuase the folks training us on those IV machines will be just as clueless as us).

Have a Happy Capitalist Healthcare future.

who posts that capitalism means that for every person who gets another $1 somebody loses a $1, does NOT understand even BASIC economics.

even some of the most ardent ANTI-capitalists, who UNDERSTAND economics understand it is not a zero sum game.

you said it was. you said it was a pyramid scheme. pyramid schemes ARE zero sum.

and i corrected you.

i didn't correct you on other stuff, and i don't see anything wrong with the rest of your post. but your belief that capitalism is zero sum is ignorant of how the economic system works.

as an analogy. i am a futures trader (mostly). futures ARE a zero sum game. stocks aren't. i could explain why, if you desire.

*if* capitalism was a zero sum, game, then aggregate wealth would remain static. NECESSARILY. that hasn;t happened

the futures market, as a counterexample does NOT grow wealth. the exact same amount of money is won as is lost (not including commissions)

Thanks for dissembling.

I just nailed it.

And capitalism is VERY much a pyramid scheme. In every aspect of this system wealth flows upward. If you are born poor in this system you more likely to get struck by lightening than to move into the top ten percent.

The very essence of the system is to extract from labor as much wealth as you can while paying as little as possible back. It is very much a zero sum game for the rest of the nine percent of the country who have to split 40 percent of the nations wealth.

capitalism is not a pyramid scheme. you want a pyramid scheme, look at the albanian pyramid scheme collapse.

sorry, if the facts disagree with your anti-capitalist rant

one can very well criticize capitalism WITHOUT repeating falsehoods.

or are you one of those people that believes that spreading lies is ok, if it's for a good ideological cause?

But anyways. Here's what the pyramid scheme looks like.

U.S. Wealth Distribution: I Get $38, You Get 23 Cents -- That's Fair, Right?
Distribution of Our Wealth Is Terribly Askew
September 4, 2001

Most people have no idea that the vast bulk of the wealth of the United States is in the hands of a relative handful of people.
The wealth distribution chart below shows that the top 1% own 38.1% of the wealth in the country, the next 4% own 21.3%, and the next 5% own 11.5%. That is to say, the top 10% of the country owns 70.9% of the wealth of this nation!

Ninety percent of the country owns a mere 29.1%.

Another way to put it: Assume there are 100 people who have $100 to split up. No one expects it to be divided perfectly evenly at $1 apiece, but everyone involved expects that some basic fairness will be used in the process that will split up the money.

Now let's say the $100 winds up being divided as follows:

1 person gets
$38.10
4 people get
$5.32 each
5 people get
$2.30 each
10 people get
$1.25 each
20 people get
.60 each
20 people get
.23 each
40 people get
1/2 cent each

The 40 people getting 1/2 cent each might be a bit annoyed at the person getting $38.10. The 20 people getting 23 cents each would probably not be happy with the 4 people receiving $5.32 each. And so on...

This is how our economic system has distributed the wealth of our country. It's so far from any type of fairness as to be laughable, were it not a direct cause of certain segments of our society lacking adequate resources for food, clothing, shelter, medical care and other necessities, let alone any amenities of a beyond-subsistence life.

http://www.therationalradical.com/dsep/wealth-distribution.htm

all those #'s arguendo, it's STILL NOT A PYRAMID SCHEME.

a pyramid scheme is , by definition, a zero sum game.

capitalism is not

hth

Pyramid scheme
A pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, often without any product or service being delivered.

Pyramid schemes are illegal in many countries, including the United States,<1> the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Norway<2>, Albania, Canada, Romania,<3> Colombia,<4> Malaysia, Poland, Bulgaria, Australia,<5> New Zealand,<6> Japan,<7> Italy,<8> Nepal, Iceland, Philippines,<9> South Africa,<10> Sri Lanka,<11> Thailand,<12> Iran, the People's Republic of China,<13> Mexico, Portugal and The Netherlands.<14> These types of schemes have existed for at least a century. Nowadays, subtler schemes exist, whereby wealth is still attained by the owner, but not unless those at the base are also earning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme


Choose to accept what it is that you like. Typical pro capitalist bullshit; When pulling the wool over your own eyes convince yourself you can do the same to others.

Because the people at the bottom of the scheme make a half cent on every dollar you can't call it a pyramid scheme. LOL

then it's going to be hard to educate you.

pyramid schemes are ZERO SUM

just like a poker game (with no rake)

the stock market is NOT zero sum. futures markets are.

it's really that simple. try reading some game theory, because you clearly have NO idea what zero sum means'

that's just in terms of folks getting some (no matter how minute) the compensation. I'll take Wiki over some anonymous internet poster who wants to "educate" me. I'll also take the word of many economists who have proclaimed capitalism the same thing.

Oh, and the way the hospitals are squeezing the nurses right now? That is a zero sum game. Refuse to address that all you like.

I operate on the English theory of value myself

I am not saying it isn't tough.

Nurses, however, are tough by nature. I was a RN for over 10 years and when I went back to get my BSN, I was awed by the women in my RN to BSN program. I have no doubt that the women (and men) will fight a tough battle against those who pull this b.s. with them.

I am no longer in the field, but I have a tremendous respect for nurses. They are fighters. And, if anyone can fight back against this shit, it is nurses.

I was very fortunate to get a job as a home health hospice nurse after taking 12 years off to be with my kids (I am 51). But my husband is a doctor and the amount of people coming in for surgeries has really decreased this last year. Many people have lost their insurance because they have lost their jobs so they can't afford the elective surgeries or even to go to the doctor for a check up (or to pay for medications). When there is a decrease in surgeries there is a decreased need for nurses. Now the ER is overflowing and sometimes has a 6 hour wait because of all the uninsured going in for medical problems. When I started the re-entry program a year ago I got right in and when I finished in May they had a long waiting list. Many nurses are going back into the field because they lost much of their savings or their husband (or wife) lost their job. For me it is to help pay for my three kids to go to college. In many ways being a nurse at my age is better because of my life experiences. The new grads shouldn't be too worried. If they want to find a job they can. I just met a new grad working at a dementia unit and she is working two 16 hour shifts (1 1/2 hours away from her home)until she can find something else closer. My pay is actually 10 dollars more an hour than it was 12 years ago.

so pure in it's simplicity


thank you

an RN for almost 50 years. she'd still be doing it now in some aspect if her eyesight hadn't crapped out on her two years ago. I feel bad for nurses, sure, most make decent money and have good working conditions, but the majority them don't. Be nice to nurses, or empty your own damn bedpan, my grandmother would often say to puffed up, self-important doctors. And she meant it.

I feel REALLY bad for any nurse that has to deal with me if I'm in the hospital. Hospitals make me nervous for some reason, and it accelerates my chatty nature and unfortunately for the nurses, they are stuck dealing with me in full chatterbox mode. I must have driven a few of them to drink when I was in for 5 days last year with a staph infection.

Hard work for certain, and certainly not work I could do, but I appreciate those that do it.

the rest are travelers. The new grads, however, are all floats. It doesn't seem to be the best thing for new grads to do is to float every day. Well, I guess they're happy to be working.

I do feel for those that are coming back under the circumstances you mentioned. What a thing to have to do and then to be taken advantage of like that.

Then maybe we would not be losing so much of the talents
of the 55-plus nurses. And we would have more room
for the young ones.