So many nurses are expressing dissatisfaction with their field today that many of them are making the quickest leap possible away from the bedside and into administration. Consequently, patient satisfaction scores are going down , especially in our city hospitals and many patients are scared to enter today's hospital systems unless they have a patient advocate, a family member or friend, to speak for them and to assure that their care is not sub-par.
Our city hospitals are overburdened by too many patients and too little qualified staff. There is a large immigrant population in our hospitals today and these patients often bring with them their own set of cultural mores and sense of entitlement. Indeed, many of today's nurses are foreign graduates as well and we face serious issues when the standards of training from country to country vary to the extreme. In many cases we are getting nurses who do not possess the standard of care skills that are basic to United States nursing and this can have terrible, and sometimes tragic results for their patients. Nursing supervisors and directors often feel the burden of these issues. They expect their RN's to be well trained and educated and are shocked to find that the patients are suffering when the basic standards are not adhered to.
There may also be language barriers that prevent a sense of communication between the nurse and the patient, which also places their care in jeopardy. Nursing directors are often throwing up their hands in frustration and abandoning their reports and paperwork to make sure that bedside care is administered in a proper fashion. In a busy environment, where nurses are in short supply, it is not that easy to call upon your department of nursing education and have your nurses re-trained in the skills and procedures that are lacking when you have one nurse for sometimes twenty to thirty patients. Couple that with our present electronic age and you may now find your nurses spending much of their time on cell phones, and text messages.
I don't know why, but there seems to be a general lack of apathy that exists in the workforce today. Years ago, the worst thing that could happen to an employee was to have the feeling that they were not up to the tasks required of them. People seemed to take more pride in their work and looked for ways to increase their own productivity and skills. Much of today's work force exists from check to check. They have child care issues, and family issues, and lack of skills issues, that make them more of a burden on the system than a correction. Couple that with a population that is more than ever, uninsured or under insured and the city hospital of today, finds itself in serious financial hot water.
Thirty years ago when my children were born, the hospital where I gave birth was immaculate. The floors were spit polished constantly, the bathroom fixtures gleamed, and the nurses were all is their starched whites, shined white shoes and caps, no less. The food was glorious, you rang your buzzer and someone was at your bedside in a flash, and they took your vitals in what seemed to be fifteen minute intervals for two full days. A few years ago, my father-in law had cancer surgery in the same hospital. The place was filthy, the bathrooms disgusting, and you couldn't tell the nursing staff from the maintenance staff were it not for the name tags. No one came to take him to the bathroom, physical therapy never showed, he did not get meals for two days, and he died in a literal hell hole of incompetence and apathy.
It's almost impossible to find the cure-all for these problems, but when the time comes, where hospitals are reimbursed for patient satisfaction, you are going to find that many of them will simply have to close their doors. How ridiculous is it that we are making doctors spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for electronic gadgets to standardize medical care, while we are allowing our sickest patients to wallow in an environment where their lives depend on so many who are unqualified to meet the challenges that medicine demands. We should insist that the staff of our hospitals are trained with a uniform method of care, that our nurses know the expectations that we place on them and more important that they are qualified to meet these expectations. We are living in an age where there will be a literal explosion of patients who are entering their twilight years and will become by their sheer numbers, the highest demand on an unprepared health care system. Isn't it about time we started to get prepared?
Our city hospitals are overburdened by too many patients and too little qualified staff. There is a large immigrant population in our hospitals today and these patients often bring with them their own set of cultural mores and sense of entitlement. Indeed, many of today's nurses are foreign graduates as well and we face serious issues when the standards of training from country to country vary to the extreme. In many cases we are getting nurses who do not possess the standard of care skills that are basic to United States nursing and this can have terrible, and sometimes tragic results for their patients. Nursing supervisors and directors often feel the burden of these issues. They expect their RN's to be well trained and educated and are shocked to find that the patients are suffering when the basic standards are not adhered to.
There may also be language barriers that prevent a sense of communication between the nurse and the patient, which also places their care in jeopardy. Nursing directors are often throwing up their hands in frustration and abandoning their reports and paperwork to make sure that bedside care is administered in a proper fashion. In a busy environment, where nurses are in short supply, it is not that easy to call upon your department of nursing education and have your nurses re-trained in the skills and procedures that are lacking when you have one nurse for sometimes twenty to thirty patients. Couple that with our present electronic age and you may now find your nurses spending much of their time on cell phones, and text messages.
I don't know why, but there seems to be a general lack of apathy that exists in the workforce today. Years ago, the worst thing that could happen to an employee was to have the feeling that they were not up to the tasks required of them. People seemed to take more pride in their work and looked for ways to increase their own productivity and skills. Much of today's work force exists from check to check. They have child care issues, and family issues, and lack of skills issues, that make them more of a burden on the system than a correction. Couple that with a population that is more than ever, uninsured or under insured and the city hospital of today, finds itself in serious financial hot water.
Thirty years ago when my children were born, the hospital where I gave birth was immaculate. The floors were spit polished constantly, the bathroom fixtures gleamed, and the nurses were all is their starched whites, shined white shoes and caps, no less. The food was glorious, you rang your buzzer and someone was at your bedside in a flash, and they took your vitals in what seemed to be fifteen minute intervals for two full days. A few years ago, my father-in law had cancer surgery in the same hospital. The place was filthy, the bathrooms disgusting, and you couldn't tell the nursing staff from the maintenance staff were it not for the name tags. No one came to take him to the bathroom, physical therapy never showed, he did not get meals for two days, and he died in a literal hell hole of incompetence and apathy.
It's almost impossible to find the cure-all for these problems, but when the time comes, where hospitals are reimbursed for patient satisfaction, you are going to find that many of them will simply have to close their doors. How ridiculous is it that we are making doctors spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for electronic gadgets to standardize medical care, while we are allowing our sickest patients to wallow in an environment where their lives depend on so many who are unqualified to meet the challenges that medicine demands. We should insist that the staff of our hospitals are trained with a uniform method of care, that our nurses know the expectations that we place on them and more important that they are qualified to meet these expectations. We are living in an age where there will be a literal explosion of patients who are entering their twilight years and will become by their sheer numbers, the highest demand on an unprepared health care system. Isn't it about time we started to get prepared?
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