Oh Dear Senator Walsh,
I was hoping you’d had some bad personal experiences with care rendered by nurses to you, family, or friends.
Not because I want anyone have substandard care much less unsafe care by nursing professionals, but because I hoped your excuse wouldn’t have been as pathetic as a reference to ‘being tired.’
Just a few weeks ago we had a dozen nurses in our OR working on a patient in a life threatening situation. One nurses sole job was to check, match, infuse packed red blood cells, and monitor the patient for a reaction to the infusion while the surgeon sewed vessels and suctioned blood seeping out from a ruptured aneurysm. I met another, the OR circulating nurse the next morning as she came out to meet my pre-op patient. She was focused, checked everything thoroughly, and reported to the family when my patient was heading to recovery room.
That nurse.
She’d gone home at 3:30 in the morning and returned at 7:00.
Just like you, She was tired also. And she didn’t bring a deck of cards to work.
That was cheeky, I’ll back off.
Your idea of challenging 12 hour shifts with a return to 8 hour shifts…Please do some more homework on this.
Going to a three shift per 24 hour continuum, requires hiring more staffing. My own hospital , that I love dearly, reports that it cost over $25,000 to put a new nurse through orientation.
Please see the below quote by the American Association of College of Nursing:
Federal figures project that if current trends continue, the shortage of RNs will continue to grow throughout the next 20 years. By 2020, more than 800,000 RN positions are expected to go unfilled nationwide, according to the National Center for Workforce Analysis, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Eight hour shifts doesn’t fix this.
Taking better care of our nurses will.
Regards,
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Running this by my WordPress family before editing, adding more statistics on this issue, and sending my letter to Senator Walsh with a request for her to be an advocate for healthcare professional rather than a Joy Behar wannabee, with too much time at the microphone.