I'm friends with quite a few nurses, primarily travel nurses, and not a single one is considering a change in career that I am aware of. Simply an anecdotal counterpoint and nothing more.
It's honestly surprising that more haven't taken the jump and is really shocking that hospitals aren't doing more to retain critical staff.
Apropos of nothing but why is the knee jerk reaction "we need executive action to fix this staffing problem?"
Help me understand this. Make it make sense...
1. Hospitals pay their nurses $X, which is way too low
2. Nurses quit because they're underpaid and overworked
3. Hospitals have a nurse staffing crisis and so pay travel nurses 2 * $X (or more!)
4. Hospitals are in a panic over the cost of travel nurses, yet instead of paying their nurses more to keep them around and eliminate the need for travel nurses, they ask the government to cap the cost of travel nurses
My mind is exploding over the ridiculousness of it.
But on the hiring side, experience is one of the most widely accepted signals of value.
IF the tradeoff is bad at 200k/yr, it wont be better at 225k/yr or 250k/yr
“Nurses” can be used to mean many things (CNAs, LVNs/LPNs, RNs) but this is specifically RNs, who, make much more than that, generally (median $77.6k/yr) https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/mobile/registered-nurses....
Given the amount of school a nurse must have, that’s low.
Not even close if you are talking about the USA (and actual nurses, not CNA's or MAs) - starting pay for 2 year RN degrees near me are about 55-65K, and you easily go over 100K in a few years.
Instead of $250k, halve the work load somehow and make it two $125k.
If there is no number, then society cannot afford it.
But this is nursing, not trying to find ways around the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If nurses received $300k/year income, then there probably would not be a shortage since the barrier to entry is not that high.
If we really want to get down to the nitty gritty of it, most people cannot afford quality nurse care (or doctors or hospitals). So the question really comes down to how much wealth is society willing to redistribute to those who need it in the form of healthcare?
He did consider that a career change, I think in the same sort of way that a computer programmer like (presumably) most of us would consider quitting Google to work on an indie app or videogame development would be a career change.
The larger point is, medical professionals are bailing from the hospital system, which looks pretty busted.
The demand for nurses is increasing as people are leaving and there are more from the boomer generation hitting an age where they need more care.
The supply has stayed the same. Schools local to me have not increased output for various reasons (lack of instructors, lack of space in local hospitals where nurses train, etc). The supply is too low.
So, we have a supply and demand problem. Travel nurses get paid a lot more because of this.
The solution is to produce more nurses. Something few are talking about.
One of the local schools, to me, turned away half of applicants because the program isn't increasing capacity.
I suppose you could just pay people more money to make it worth it but the long hours take a toll in other ways as well and contribute to burnout no matter how much you get paid.
Obviously higher pay would increase their abuse tolerance, but I think it is only part of the problem and a short term solution since no amount of pay will offset stress problems.
County level nurses seem to have much better work conditions than hospital nurses.
Nurses are generally payed very well. This is a supply problem driven by increasing restrictions on nursing degrees and insurance.
Not enough nurses and high cost leaves hospitals understaffed and nurses overworked, leading to a feedback cycle.
But, before COVID there was already a supply problem. The supply problem has been slowly getting worse for years and then COVID accelerated it. If every nurse came back to working as a nurse who wanted to work there would still be a supply problem.
Supply has not been growing to meet the demand growth for years.