Is it difficult to imagine that U.S. nurses can be paid better than nurses in other countries but at the same time not paid well enough and exploited beyond their breaking point?
Summary: Hospitals cut costs by staffing the bare minimum. Patients aren’t receiving the care the should be. Nurses are experiencing moral distress and leaving en masse.
I work at CHLA. We are losing experienced nurses due to the lowest wages in the LA area for the level of care we give. Shameful for a hospital that is Best Children’s Hospital in the west.
The pay discrepancy between the executives and staff is criminal
We need more publicity about this. Help the nurses out and let’s get more eyes on this issue, particularly CHLA. Celebrities love that place and use it for PR often.
Let’s give the nurses some badly needed PR. They are non-union and notoriously underpaid. Best care for kids maybe but also best kept secret in worker’s dissatisfaction
Comparing the US with OECD isn't proof that pay or staffing aren't part of the problem. Nurses can be underpaid, and still earn more than their peers in other countries.
Also, it looks like the outrageous costs of healthcare in the US don't correlate at all with nurses' wages. If I were a nurse, I would feel demoralised if I was doing a lot of the hard work, yet administrators and middlemen still get the most money.
Maybe in California, but most of the US is not union and most nurses do not make anywhere close to this. $30-40/hr is much more typical. That salary is far about the top 10% of nursing salaries (which is $106k).
>Are they light pattern people getting exploited? Why won't society raise their salaries, so more people will work as nurses or at least not resign
I would guess that most nurses get into the job because they want to help people, that seems like a really light pattern trait.
Society only very indirectly decides their salaries. At least in most countries right now it's a market mechanism that is ruthless. Of course there are other humans that may or may not have moral qualms. But as long as some people are ready to exploit others they have a pretty clear financial competitive edge (all else being equal).
If nurse salaries are low the economic answer is simple, it's because there are enough (or too many) nurses willing to take this job at that pay level.
The societal answer is not that simple. We actually want more nurses, because they are needed. We also don't want to pay more for healthcare, maybe we can't, America seems to be at the limit here, Western Europe is already close. So if you want more and better paid nurses without paying more, that only leaves shifting money from insurances, hospitals and pharmaceutical/medical equipment companies to nurses.
And to get to do that there has to be some market pressure or regulation.
Only in a vaccuum. It pays far worse than other jobs at the same rate given the effort and stress the job entails.
> don't they get more leverage on what QOL and wages they can demand ?
Sure, but it needs to get far worse. The hospitals are only going to budge once walkouts are organized. But that can't happen without strong unions, most nurses just need to pay the bills which is why they continue to put up with it.
I'm not sure you understand who has the leverage. The hospitals can let healthcare deteriorate far beyond current expectations. They still get paid in the end. The environment for patients and nurses will only get worse.
>"WhY dO We `haVe` to pAY tRaVELiNg NUrSeS SOOoOOO mUCh?!?"
Because you refuse to employ full-time staff at reasonable salaries, thus encouraging more nurses to become "travelers" getting paid 5x+ on short-term, renegotiable contracts.
When un[der]appreciated nurses find out that their hospital sucks (after having literally been bled dry of funding, talent, and ability to provide actual healthcare), it is a quick revolt into contract nursing.
I LOVE NURSES. To make a nurse hate you, is not an impossible task dear Healthcare Admin.
What you need to realize is that nursing salaries in the US are NOT uniform. From what I've seen in past discussions about it is they range anywhere from $20/hr -> $100k/year. The $100k/year are usually achieved only in cities and generally only by travel nurses.
The majority of nurses, that I've seen, are clocking in at 50->60k yearly salary.
Sort of like saying "Oh, that google dev makes $300k a year. How much more do devs in the US need?"
>1. Many new nurses make the same or more and long time nurses. It's frustrating when the nurse in charge with the most experience is making less than new nurses. Some hospitals are even trying to stop nurses from talking about pay.
I think non-performance-based pay is something endemic to many female-dominated professions.
My wife used to work in childcare, and it did her head in that she was paid less than complete idiots who'd been working there longer than she had.
Re. 2 I learnt to my great astonishment yesterday that that is not necessarily true: ER nurses in Austin are paid $25/hr since the town pretty much has two large conglomerates that manage all healthcare [1]. It really makes one wonder why healthcare is so expensive in this country. My only explanation for the motivation of doctors/nurses to overwork/burn-out is that compared to a typical tech job, their work saves human lives.
Nurses are paid well compared to the average worker in the US, but not compared to the service they provide. My wife, an RN BSN, was hit with a pay cut due to hospital system being bought out by another larger one. That's right, a pay cut, during a pandemic. Now on a fixed pay scale, with no raises built in. $3/hr shift differential for working night shift in no way makes up for the strain it puts on your body, your free time, and your relationships. Tons of attrition in her hospital and department, no signs of retention bonuses or anything other than a "We <3 our healthcare heroes" sign out front.
On the upside, traveling nurses are now routinely making 5-10K a week (and they usually get real PPE rather than be told to reuse stuff) That's far better money than most soldiers (or even FAANG engineers) make, and the risk of being shot or having to write crappy unit tests is far smaller.
> It pays far worse than other jobs at the same rate given the effort and stress the job entails.
Depends on location. Most professions I know with that much effort and stress get paid a lot less than $100K, which is the median nurse pay in my area. Amazon pays a lot less.
> The nursing shortage could be solved by hiring more.
At least in Germany, there are massive amounts of open job postings for nursing and other care staff. The problem is that the wages are way too low, as the county/city-owned clinics have to adhere to the budget rule of maximum efficiency and minimum taxpayer subsidies (which led to massive outsourcing and other cost saving efforts in Munich [1]) and private-owned clinics are under financial pressure from their owners (you gotta make those 18% EBIT [2] somehow), while at the same time the amount of money that the public health insurances pay for procedures (fixed rates across the country) is not enough to cover these costs.
Yea, but we are starting to see upcoming issues with nurses in the US where some places just don't have enough. Granted, this is more because hospitals are trying to keep their number of nurses as low as possible. The hospital my wife works at, they suppress the number of nurses when they in fact need more and just hire travel nurses on demand. Then they complain that travel nurses cost too much. I don't think pay is the only factor here. Nurses get paid great by hospitals, but also still get treated like shit. My wife doesn't even get bathroom breaks during her 12 shift and most of the time no lunch break because there is never a nurse available to cover for a 30 minute lunch or a 5 minute bathroom break.
A bit of context:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/opinion/nurses-staffing-h...
Here's a response by an anonymous staff member at LA's Children's Hospital:
( https://old.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/s7wfqo/we_know_... )
Summary: Hospitals cut costs by staffing the bare minimum. Patients aren’t receiving the care the should be. Nurses are experiencing moral distress and leaving en masse.
I work at CHLA. We are losing experienced nurses due to the lowest wages in the LA area for the level of care we give. Shameful for a hospital that is Best Children’s Hospital in the west.
The pay discrepancy between the executives and staff is criminal
We need more publicity about this. Help the nurses out and let’s get more eyes on this issue, particularly CHLA. Celebrities love that place and use it for PR often.
Let’s give the nurses some badly needed PR. They are non-union and notoriously underpaid. Best care for kids maybe but also best kept secret in worker’s dissatisfaction
reply