Every morning I wake up and thank God that we still have some Republicans in Congress. Representative John Shadegg (R) from Arizona, is one of those blessings. He has introduced a bill in Congress called the Nursing Reform Act of 2009. The bill calls for increasing work visas for foreign nurses (and their spouses). When passed, it will eliminate the nursing shortage!
This bill is great on so many levels. For one, everyone knows that healthcare is costing us an arm and a leg (pun intended). The biggest causes are obviously nurses and nursing unions. Nurses are way overpaid, but unfortunately the healthcare corporations have not been able to break the nursing unions because of the shortage of nurses. By bringing in lots of foreigners, they can flood the market with labor, break the unions, and get nursing salaries down to where they belong — somewhere around what retail pays. If only there weren’t that law capping the number of foreign nurses we allow in the country… As a side benefit, the bill allows for nurses’ spouses to get unrestricted work visas as well, so it will help bring down salaries in all sorts of other industries as well!
The true brilliance of this bill (thank you Mr. Shadegg!) is in the way it is written. It doesn’t bring them all in at once. It starts out with 50,000 new visas the first year, which is a low enough number that people will “buy it” and the bill can get passed. Supporters of the bill have had to go to great lengths to say that nursing salaries will be unchanged, which of course will be true at first. However, the genius in the bill (evil grin) is that the number of allowable visas automatically goes up 20% per year, so it will be 60,000 visas in year two, 72,000 visas in year three, 86,400 visas by year four, 103,680 by year five, and a whopping 124,416 by year six! The bill states that “According to the Department of Labor, the current national nursing shortage exceeds 126,000.” Therefore, the nursing shortage will be solved in about six short years, and healthcare companies can get back to earning the kind of money they deserve! Incidentally, this is just the approach that was so successful in cutting the salaries earned by information technology workers about 10 years ago. Corporate profits were getting impacted by high IT costs, so our brilliant Congress increased the number of H1-B visas, and companies were able to hire cheap workers from India and other places. Thank you, Congress! Later, many of these foreign workers returned to their homelands and brought the work with them. Now, corporate America doesn’t have to pay high salaries, and they don’t even have to look at the foreigners anymore — they can just write a little check to India. Bravo! Fortunately, information technology salaries have never rebounded to the levels where they were.
But I digress. Back to nursing. Let’s face it, nursing is difficult, degrading work. Nurses sometimes have to wipe feces, for Christ’s sake. We’re Americans and we’re better that that! We can certainly find some Indians, Filipinos, or Chinese to do that work, ridding self-respecting Americans of the need to perform that dirty job. The last 20 years have been a long road, but we’ve come a long way, baby. We’ve rid ourselves of the burden of almost all manufacturing jobs, call center jobs, and as mentioned earlier, many information technology jobs. Fortunately, we Americans don’t need to do those things anymore. This bill is the first step down the same glorious road for healthcare. It was recently reported that in 2009, over 6 million Americans will travel abroad for surgery (http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/03/27/india.medical.travel/index.html). Once these foreign nurses are fluent in “American-style healthcare,” many can return home to help proliferate cheap healthcare services to those Americans that can afford to fly overseas. Think of the opportunities this will create for the airline industry and the beloved industries that support the airline industry — like jet fuel suppliers and Boeing!
President Obama reportedly wants to solve the nursing shortage by training unemployed Americans for these jobs. As usual, that guy has it all bass-ackwards. First of all, we Americans are too good to be nurses. Second of all, it would be tough to train enough new nurses to break the unions and get nursing wages down to retail wage levels. Only India and China, with their billions of people, are capable of rapidly flooding the market with enough labor. Third, everyone knows that the millions of unemployed Americans are lazy, good-for-nothings that are not smart enough or good enough to be nurses. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be unemployed in the first place, right? Fourth, training Americans to be nurses is expensive. Why, in Mr. Shadegg’s home state of Arizona, the high unemployment rate and falling tax revenue have forced the state funded university (Arizona State), to cut its nursing program by 26% in terms of students accepted into the program (http://nursing.asu.edu/general/deans_welcome.htm). Let’s face it, with unemployment so high, we just can’t afford to train Americans to be nurses. Perhaps if we cut taxes on all of the oppressed wealthy Americans, we could afford to train more nurses…
Opponents of this bill will probably say that John Shadegg has sold out to the healthcare industry. I say, phooey! They will probably point out that In the campaign finance cycle for 2008, he received over $244,000 from the healthcare sector, over $168,000 of which was from healthcare political action committees (http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00006425). That may be true, but Mr. Shadegg is a patriot! He would NEVER let campaign contributions influence the legislation he introduces or sway his vote in any way.
My only criticism of the bill is that it doesn’t go far enough. Perhaps it’s not too late. I would urge Mr. Shadegg to expand this legislation so that we bring in an additional 50,000 foreign doctors, 50,000 foreign dentists, 50,000 foreign lawyers, 50,000 foreign engineers, and 310 learned people for “government positions” (254 to take the Democratic congressional seats and 56 to take the Democratic Senate seats, ha ha ha!!!!!). Clearly, overpaid nurses are not the only problem we face as Americans. My fellow Americans, we must remember, what’s good for American corporations is good for America. We’ve come a long way, but there are still some high paying jobs that are held by Americans. With the help of patriots like Mr. Shadegg, we can fix that!
Categories: Uncategorized
Really when someone doesn’t know afterward its up to other viewers that they will
help, so here it occurs.
Let the nurses quit and see how fast the patients crumble at a record rate. Some people have not one clue what doctors and nurses do.
Over the years I have been in contact with many doctors and nurses and its always a plus when I can understand them. Why not put our health and well being of ourselves and children in the hands of the lowest bidder. Its worked so far. (yeah right). THIS is another attack on our Middle class. The nurses are the backbone of our medical system. The LPNs and RNs get all the shit…pun intended. I am not a nurse or have anything to do with the medical field. But have had my share of contact with nurses due to injuries over the years. These are the first people we see when there is an emergency and when life is at stake. And when the chips are down, and I am sorry if its politicaly incorrect, I want my nurse, doctor, etc. to be American taught and trained. Whoever posted this blog or whatever the hell they’re called must have never been on the needing end of assistance when you could barely understand what the person is saying. And that’s over the phone renewing insurance . If the wages listed in these other blogs are accurate that sounds right to me. These people are in the thick of it. Nothing against the doctors out there, but the nurses run the show. I’m sorry if this hasn’t been all political correct. Lets not screw over our nurses and say we did. When it comes down to someone handling my newborn children I would happily pay them $25 an hour or more. Lets not target the nurses for medical cutbacks. How about targeting pharmaceutical companies.
the “opinion” is sharp and funny… the comments are just plain funny. how can people not understand that this is satire?! perhaps this says a lot about our education system… let’s do the same thing for teachers! (KIDDING!!)
this article is not a republican or democratic way of thinking. it’s more like totalitarianism. maybe socialistic way of thinking. it only works in the head, but when applied they realized it has become a disaster.
Whoever wrote this article must be a very selfish person that doesn’t consider what it’s like in the other person’s perspective. People like this is a cancer to this country. This is obviously the most despicable article i’ve ever read. He should go hang himself.
Nursing is one of the best human services. Now it has become an earning profession.
Are you insane!!! There are millions of unemployed nurses out there virtually thousands who have repeatedly applied for jobs and cannot get one!!!!!! Nursing shortage my ass they simply do not want to spend money on hiring them, that is an excuse to cut back on costs and work the butts off the poor slave nurses in the hospital who have to run to keep up the pace of the slave requirements. It is hell being a nurse, most of them hate it with a passion. Look up I hate nursing it is so overcrowed there are virtually hundreds of sites on the internet of venting underpaid slave labor nurse. Keep the fking Filipinos in the Philippines and hire American. San Francisco is hurting desperately no jobs for nurses avail. It is a joke!! Nursing shortage my ass.
Good job with your satirical article Angry American. Unfortunately, and typically, nurses in general neither have much of sense of humor nor the sophistication to capture the power of satire in denouncing chronic social and political inequities for which the public have been desensitized or just don’t care.It is really pathetic to realize the large number of respondents that didn’t have enough interpretative skills to get the sharp ironic message of the article.
Are you a moron? I am currently in Nursing school and busting my BUTT to provide the best quality care I could give to a patient. What do you do with your life? Why in the heck would I put myself through all the hard work to get paid just as much as someone who ONLY graduated in high school in retail?
I agree with Erica above me, I’m a republican and God knows most do not think like that. You should be ashamed of yourself.
It seems the nursing shortage is waning at the moment in this down economy. More nurses who were working part time are working more hours to make up for their spouses who may have lost jobs. When the economy comes back, the demand for nurses will increase and there will be another shortage = higher pay.
This is the worst blog I have ever read. Nurses don’t make enough already and you want to decrease our pay to minimum wage? You have no idea what we do and what we have to know to become nurses. The high cost of healthcare is not because of overpaid nurses because we are very underpaid and do most of the work. I have nothing against foreigners, but patient outcomes are based on what type of nursing care they get, and we must admit that there is more sickness over seas than it is in America, so I wonder what type of care these people are receiving. So, go ahead and bring the foreigners over here because for minimum wage, thats all you will have. At the facility I work for, there are 6 patients to every nurse and we work 12 hour shifts. The average patient is being charged about 5000 a day. The average nurse in my area makes between 20 and 25 dollars a hour. You do the math. If I have 6 patients and take care of them for 12 hours making 25 dollars a hour, the cost of nursing for those 6 patients is 300.00 for 12 hours divided amongst them (not 300 per pateint) but the patients have been charged 15,000 for 12 hours. So nursing care for 1 day for 6 patients is 600 dollars at the most, but these 6 patients have been charged about 30,000 for 1 whole day. To sum it up in a nutshell, the average patient is being charged 100 dollars a day for nursing care but being charged about 5000 day. So, lowering nursing wages is not going to solve the high cost of healthcare. But, I’ll tell you what it will do, worsen it. Nursing is not just about wiping ass and doing IV’s. We are not just paid for our nursing skills, but we are paid for what we know. In most cases we have to know almost as much as doctors. Thats why you have to go to school for several years to be a RN and who in there right mind is going to go to school from 4 to 5 years to get a bachelor degree in nursing for minimum wage? We have to tell the doctors what to do over half the time. We are advocates for our patients. We make sure you have what you need when your doctor is not there. When shit go wrong with you, we are the people fixing it. You are lucky if you see your doctor 5 minutes a day. So if your lungs or your heart sounds bad and your doctor is not there, guess who hears it first, we do. You can even train techs to do certain nursing skills; however, they don’t have our educational backgroud, so if something goes wrong, is that tech gonna know what to do, is that tech gonna be able to realize that these meds are contraindicated, is the tech gonna know, you can’t stick there, is the tech gonna know you can only use this type of vein for this IV med, is the tech gonna know when putting down an NG tube that they are in your trachea about to go down into your lungs and instead of your esophagus, is the tech gonna know that you are not producing enough urine an hour and you are about to go into kidney failure, is the tech gonna know you are in danger of having a heart attack and stop it before it happens, is the tech gonna be able to provide teachings to you to prevent pneumonia and other things, ect. This is very dangerous because it is sooo much that goes into nursing that most people don’t realize because I could write a book on it, and thats why you go to school for several years for it, because its a lot to it. So if your life is worth saving a few bucks, go ahead and pass this stupid bill. As a matter of fact, when you are dying, I will go get somebody from housekeeping to take care of you since being a nurse is sooo easy to do. I bet you will be willing to pay top dollar for a qualified licensed nurse then.
Wow. Lot of dull-witted nurses out there. Back when I was in college, they made us read Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”. I guess the curriculum has been dumbed down since then and no one understands mordant satire anymore. Welcome to Idiocracy.
Those of you that think the foreign nurse should come here, you just might get one for a nurse. I am not saying that all are like this, but I work with about 90% of foreign nurses and most of them work several jobs, then come to the night shift to work, but instead they sleep most of the night, chart about 4:30 am, hardly go in the room. Yes they have been reported by staff, patient and families, but we all want to be politically correct, so nothing happen. I want you to get one of these nurses to care for you, maybe you will think about this twice.
It is the black & white nurses here that work like a dog to care for these patients, because here in the USA, we are trained to do just that.
Actually, your CNA (certified nurses assistant) is the one who will wipe your feces and give you a bedbath…. Do you actually know what an RN does? Go shadow one for a day, and then rewrite this article… The only reason there is a “shortage” is because care facilities are too cheap to hire adequate staff. Contrary to your opinion nurses aren’t the doctors uneducated “help”. Many of them don’t get paid near enough for the amount of continued education and skill that they have.
Can someone explain to me how you say a nurse is under or overpaid? Don’t you have ot compare the wages of other occupations? IF so, nurses have associate, bachlors, masters and phd’s in nursing. Also, most nurses I know get paid hourly. Around $25.00/ hour. About $50,000 a year. That’s totally, equal to other occupations with the same educaiton. Engineer, teacher, chemist, etc. However, alot of times you hear a nurse making 70, 80, 90 thousand a year. That’s because of overtime. Time and a half pay. IT’s true unions are for the workers and comand a higher wage. If hospitals are raking in the dough. Why not pass on some to the employees. I recognize that the have not’s will always complain about others who have.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was an undercover democrat that is attempting to make the republicans look bad.. This was a horrible blog. Nurses are God’s gift to us when we are sick.
I have a better idea… everybody just take care of yourselves. No more hospitals, no more healthcare, nothing. Live in caves like primitive life forms. Forget all about humanity. OK?
OK?
OK?
OK?
OK?
Response to Angry American who thinks nurses should make minimum wage like retail workers and the answer to America’s nursing shortage is solved by recruiting foreign nurses.
Comparison of Nurses to Retail Workers:
Nurses save lives, run hospitals, make critical decisions that can initiate a chain of events for a positive outcome for a patient, or if fatigued from overtime or understaffed, may miss a subtle nuance or change in the medical status of a patient which may lead to death.
Nurses are not selling widgets. Nurses are saving lives, bringing new life into the world, or supporting a patient through the end of life, supporting families with difficult decisions such as whether or not to donate organs, withdraw life support, or continue on with hope for a miracle. Nurses must be knowledgable in physiology and how their nursing practice impacts a patient’s condition. Nurses titrate cardiac drips according to blood pressures and heart rates and perform perform CPR and advanced cardiac life support to save lives. Nurses must be aware of National Patient Safety Goals and core measures that decrease infection rates, falls, skin break down, restraint use, and many more nursing-sensitive indicators to prevent death. We, yes I am a nurse, have extensive education and must be as fluent in our technology and communication skills as we are in our clinical skills.
The foreign nurse debate:
Recruiting foreign nurses to ease the US shortage is not the answer to the nursing shortage. If you have researched the main driver of the nursing shortage it is not a lack of Americans willing to enter the profession but a lack of Nurse Educators to keep up with the demand of educating new nurses. Part of this problem is to teach nursing a professor must have a PhD in nursing. Doctorally prepared nursing professors are paid a fraction of what law professors, MBA professors, and medical professors are paid- see the inequity. So a nurse who invests years (like myself currently in graduate school) in nursing education is likely to take a cut in pay to teach the future nurses. How is one to pay off student loans for master’s degree’s and doctoral degrees with reduced pay? Besides that fact, many people want to practice nursing rather than teach it.
Lastly, draining nurses from other countries is unethical, unless they are wishing to immigrate here on their own. There is a global nursing shortage. Besides the ethical debate studies show that the communication barriers exhibited by some foreign nurses lead to poor outcomes for patients. The Joint Commission attributes a large percentage of nursing or medical errors and deaths to breakdowns in communication. Nurses from foreign countries are often trained in a hierarchial environment where they don’t question doctors orders or cower to doctors or others rather than speaking up on behalf of their patient. This is not my opinion, it is in the literature. Some American patients feel the difference in care with some foreign nurses due to communication and cultural barriers. For example, in many foreign countries the family is expected to stay with the patient, bring food and provide all personal care. Please don’t misunderstand me, I am thankful for the foreign nurses I work with and enjoy the diversity. But bringing in 50,000 is a temporary bandaid, not a long-term solution, and drains other countries of the nurses they need to run their own hospitals. Yes, nurses run hospitals too.
This is crazy.
Angry American, you have no idea, about what you have advertisd here. I wish you would fall sick to experience what nursing is like, and how much time a nurse spends with you, for the little money they make. You should be ashamed about yourself for writing something like this.
I see that you are very racist, you have no right to condemn any nation ,moreover have you even thought that you may not even be a true American, as this soil was owned by none other that the American Indians and all others are immigrants at some point in their ancestry.
So go find your origin before you start condemning human race.
The reason for the need for nurses coming in from other countries would be that there is a shortage in America. Not because nurses in America are too good to wipe butts, but the Nursing Profession does not get paid near enough for what they do and the responsibilities that are placed on them. Nurses have to know that the orders they receive from the MD are appropriate. Nurses have to Assess, Plan, Implement and Evaluate all aspects of care. Nurses have to anticipate when a patient is in danger. Nurses are given too many sick patients to watch at any given time, placing all patients at risk. Nurses are abused day in and day out. Yes there are awesome doctors, but there are also doctors that throw bloody surgical instruments at nurses when they are having a temper tantrum in the OR. Yes there are awesome managers, but there are managers who play head games with nurses turning staff against each other and playing favoritism. Yes there are great Administrators, but there is administration who have been caught frauding medicare and dabling in illegal activities and misappropriation of funds. If anything, nurses need a raise. They are underpaid. Then if nurses were paid well to be in an abusive situation, there might not be as much of a shortage and there might not be a need to bring in nurses from other countries, etc. It has nothing to do with wiping butts. Nurses are patient advocates and keep them in the best condition possible while under their care. Nurses also risk their own health by being in this profession. There are workers comp injuries from hurting their backs lifting and moving obese patients. Do obese people think about that? There are infections and blood borne pathogens that nurses may be exposed to on a daily basis. You obviously have not a clue, Angry American. And since you titled yourself Angry American, then maybe you should attend anger management classes. This may help your own health in the long run.
Dear Mr. Angry,
I just wanted to take a moment to express my sincere disappointment. Yep, I’m a nurse. Yep, I got it, you were trying to be funny, with some witty satire. Yep, I see that you were trying to point out how backwards it is to pass legislation “outsourcing” nursing.
But, by making a funny funny post, what you did was perpetuate the ongoing misconception of what a nurse does. You describe nurses as a group of butt wiping, overpaid babysitters with skills the equivilant of retail clerks. And while yes, in my 13 years of nursing experience I have done my fair share of butt wiping and babysitting, my daily work involves so very much more than the public understands. So let me clarify my job description for you and for the American public that you have misinformed.
In my career I have: Sat by a patient as the only person in the room while they met their maker, and provided dignified post mortem care for them; Given a 40 year old wife the news that her husband had suffered a massive heart attack and was recovering from a cardiac cath procedure that saved his life for the third time; Told a hospitalist the orders that she needed to write for a patient suffering from Diabetic Ketoacidosis; Helped countless doctors sort through the diagnostics on their patients and helped make critical decisions in their patients’ care; Provided critical information to doctors during their patients’ sudden onset of cardiac dysrhythmias; Run countless codes; Prayed with families and patients prior to some very frightening surgeries; Packed countless gaping abdomenal wounds; Given countless doses of Morphine, Zofran and Insulin; Spotted critical errors and omissions in care and brought them to the attention of the doctor responsible for immediate correction; Informed families of impending brain death of their loved ones; Held countless hands; Held direct pressure on gushing arterial bleeds; Properly diagnosed an MI and provided proper emergency care; Attended the funeral of multiple patients; Gone running for a countless number of bedpans and barf buckets; Facilitated continuity of care by communicating with pharmacists, dieticians, CT techs, MRI techs, Xray techs, doctors, chaplains, and fellow nurses; Allowed families vent their dissatisfaction with the hospital, with their doctor, with their family members, with their church, with their government and with me; Allowed my management vent their dissatisfaction with the hospital, with doctors, with family, with the government and with me; And, I have dispenced great advice and even greater hugs freely.
I have done all of these things during my career, and many of these things all in one week at my work. I do all of this during my 12 hour shift with one 30 minute lunch break. I am adequately compensated for my work. I am not overpaid; I am not underpaid. I don’t feel that my work is degrading or that I am too good for my work. On the contrary, I start and end each day with a prayer to my maker. And, I feel so very humbled and blessed each day to spend the most intimate moments of my patients’ lives each shift.
So imagine my dismay after reading your ridiculous blog that portrayed my work in such a simplistic, inaccurate light…. I am dissapointed in your misrepresentation of my career. And, I hope I clarified for you what a nurse actually does. Perhaps the next time you find yourself writing about nurses, you can be more graceful and thoughtful about the group of people you post about.
Thankyou,
Carissa Pillow, RN CCRN
ok, first off check your facts before you start making rash assumptions. The nursing shortage is a result from a shortage of teachers. If there are no teachers willing to teach, there are minimal spots avaiable for students. This problem needs to be recognized and addressed immediatly. Second, nurses should not be paid minimum wage. The skill, talent, emotional and physical work that nurses endure is tremendous. If nurses were paid minimum wage nurses would not put any effort into their work or care about the lives they were working so hard for. As two American nursing students, who put their blood, sweat and tears into their education (to care for your ass someday!!!) we are highly offended by this post. Just remember, be nice to nurses and their career because they could be saving your life one day!
Then Dr.’s wages need to be cut too!! Nurses need to know almost as much as they do. Nurse are the investigators and report many signs, symptoms, reactions, and have to know what to do if the Dr. is not around. They need to know when to call the Dr. and also use some autonomy. Wages for nurses not in unions SHOULD NOT be cut!!!!! We did not go through all of the training and licensing for NOTHING!
I worked a13 hour shift last night took care of young, and old very sick patients,. I worked so hard physically that I am sore! I would challenge the author of this post to try and be a waitress, doctor, nursing assistant, counselor, punching bag, and maid all while speed walking for 13 hours, that my friend is a nurse! I earn every penny I make! Also, side note if there’s not enough patients to keep us totally balls to the walls busy we get canceled with out pay or have to use our vacation! There is not a nursing shortage! The hospitals in the south give us 6-7 patients a piece, if it drops to where u might have some extra time to take with patients, they cancel one us. ( we r not supposed to tell patient’s that though) …rant from cell phone
seriously thats f*** bs. In order to become a nurse you have to at least get an associates degree. Why would you go to school to get a job that pays the same as fast food, might as well work at fast food its less stress. And I say no to foreign workers, no offense. But you need to stay in your own country. Wages are low enough because of forgein workers. You can survive off minimum wage. You would have to work two jobs at minimum wage to pay the bills, and that’s just by yourself. I’m going to become a nurse and I am getting my bachelors. $7.50 no f***** way for 4 years of school at $10k a year.
I am a current nursing student and I feel that if the gov cuts nurse’s pay you will surely have a crisis on hand. Who is going to put in all the time and training for minimum wage?
People like you should not be allowed to have an opinion.
YOU ARE AN UNEDUCATED ARROGANT IDIOT. Enough said. Trying to educate you with valid points would be a waste of time because your selfish, backwards head is so far up your own ass you would have no idea how to process the information.
BTW, nurses deserve every amount of compensation they deserve. They train hard and work hard to not only save lives, but monitor their vitals and extend care where needed. I agree with the above, let’s put you at minimum wage and see how far you get Angry American blog writer. Or how about next time you’re in need of dire care and you have a minimum waged nurse taking care of you…let’s see how much that nurse will want to care or give a damn for your sorry ass.
Who in the hell do you think you are writing bullshit like this?
Ignorance. That’s what this article is. I would like to see this author live one day in my shoes and then pay him minimum wage for all of the physically and mentally taxing work he had done. Let’s see how much you’d want nurses to get paid minimum wage then! We save lives. I think that’s just a little more important than working in retail, don’t you?
My wife is a nurse and if it wasn’t for her my family would probably not be eating. I got laid off in manufacturing and I took alot of pride in my work, then they ship the jobs overseas. Alot of people I know have gotten into the healthcare industry after being in manufacturing because you can make a living. I have had to move across the country to look for work in my field and eventually all of it will be gone. If they start reducing nursing wages how are we going to survive,basicly I think its all about big business, if the health care insurance is not making money they try to pay off the politicians to get them to pass laws that work to their favor. As my dad always said “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” As my mom always said “We’ll all be picking shit with the chickens pretty soon”.
Additionally, have you ever even spent a day in a nurses shoes. I am a full time ER nurse and a PRN ICU nurse on my way to getting my Masters degree and you want to pay me minimum wage? I take care of children, adults, trauma patients, minor care patients, and critically ill patients. A day doesn’t go by that we aren’t swamped, understaffed, overworked and have more high acuity patients to care for than what is probably safe. I’ll tell you, once you go to work and have to clean poop, vomit, suction gobs of mucous from tracheotomies, get blood on you, watch people die, console their families, have patients manipulate you for pain meds, watch patients who truly are in pain, get yelled at, have psych patients attempt to harm you and do it all between the hours of 7pm and 7am when the rest of your family is home sleeping and then come home just in time for them to leave. Tell me then that you still think nurses should be paid minimum wage. And everyday, I come back to work because I still LOVE my job. I love helping people get better, or have someone be with them and care for them when they are dying. I love saving lives and I love my co-workers. I even love night shift but I promise you, paying us 7.50 and hour would definitely increase the nursing shortage. No one should ever choose nursing for money…if you don’t like to take care of people then it’s not the job for you but it’s damn well worth more than minimum wage.
Let the lawmakers and the management of healthcare shadow a real bedside nurse for a couple of days and they would not feel like we are overpaid!!! Let them watch us for 6 months of nursing and classes to maintain our skills, mandatory meetings, mandatory yearly competencies, pressure to meet all the standards of the review boards, fielding complaints from patients and families that think they are the only sick ones the nurse deals with each day, and they will be begging to get our salaries increased!!!!
Why don’t we politicians and government employees get paid minimum wage since they don’t deal with what half the nurses deal with on a daily basis? then maybe they could walk a day in a nurse’s shoes and get another job like the rest of the people. or why don’t we cut their salary by one million dollars and every movie star or sports stars’ salary by one million dollars and dump into the federal debt and that might make a difference. lord knows none of them would miss one million dollars. it is prob all sitting in a bank account anyway.
I hope the author of this article gets to be hospitalized and cared for by one of the minimum wage, outsourced nurses he so highly speaks of and then lets see how he feels. I worked hard for my license and I’ll be damned if I am treated like all I do is pass out band-aids. Perhaps we should lower some other over inflated salaries like celebrities, politicians and pro-sports players.
He is probably educated. But he is definitely misinformed. He didn’t do his research about what nurses really do and why they should get paid more than what they are currently getting. Minimum wage? You have no idea!
He is racist as well. Americans are too good to be nurses? What are you good then for?
Is this a joke? Who is the author of this ridiculous article? It is very evident that the person who wrote this has no clue about the nursing profession, nor does he or she have any regard to humanity. The profession of nursing is what makes up the core of the delivery of healthcare. Nurses get paid 1/3 of what Physicians get paid to do three times as much work as any doctor. “Nurses are overpaid” …Seriously?
But yet, it is mentioned later on “everyone knows that the millions of unemployed Americans are lazy, good-for-nothings that are not smart enough or good enough to be nurses.”
This article is a just a pile of contradicting garbage written by an obviously uneducated individual.
Nurses should not make minimum wage, but they are very well compensated. Consider that even with an associate’s degree they can earn more than 40k, when teachers with a bachelor’s degree often don’t earn as much. It is critical work, and requires much more than cleaning feces (which the CNA’s help with), but they are well compensated.
This person obviously wouldn’t put their actual name on this article because even he/she is aware of how completely ludicrous and ignorant their words are. To whoever you are I am truly sorry that you know so little about the world. But please, until you get even the slightest hint of a clue, don’t write anything else.
Let’s pay doctors minimum wage.
Lets pay Investors; in kind services to them and their Families. Lets pay CEO’s Peanuts as it would motivate them to get off their lazy ass’s and improve Health Facilities.Cost Containment,Patient Safety,staffing,Medical Error, and Hospital Acquired Infections.
Such Mis direction is exactly what has brought Quality of Care from No#1 to No#38 among forty industrialized Nations. The Idea to outsource nurses at a fraction of a average of $25.00 dollars and hour or greater; would undermine our progressive economic status and further compromise patient Care.
The Changes need to be from the top down.Any other way is wrong!!!
What a load of crap! You don’t have the first clue about what being a nurse means. Its emotionally and physically difficult. You can’t just train any body to be a nurse, they have to be willing and able and understand what they will be dealing with. I don’t see any of this stuff you have talked about happening.
It takes a special person to be a nurse. It requires intelligence, ability to process to information quickly and under pressure, it takes physical agility, it takes an assertive but not aggressive personality and it takes an exceptionally compassionate person. They should be celebrated!
I guess when you post specific jobs you are removed for advertising. Just to make a point, I don’t think people really get the picture that U.S. licensed NCLEX passers do make as low as minimum wage in some parts of what is considered U.S. soil. The starting salaries, (I do have a number of specifics of which I am not affiliated) from a private doctor at a clinic located inside the hospital in the Northern Mariana islands has an open position for an U.S. licensed R.N. from $6/hr to $10/hr. Also, there is a private home health service that has an open posting for an unlicensed R.N. for $5/hr to $5/hr. This is not a joke or satire, it is really happening. Currently there are over 400,000 nursing graduates (many of which have passed the U.S. NCLEX) in the Philippines alone and many would work for much low salaries if given the chance. Salaries are as high as they are for nurses due to low numbers of visas being given. If unlimited visas were given, salaries would actually drop dramatically.
Just one more comment. You may not have health care or you may not have affordable health care or you may not have health care that cannot be arbitrarily “downsized” by the health care industry-But, you do have a VOTE!
Remember who voted against health care, regardless of why! Vote accordingly!
However, everyone wants the House and Senate to change but not “their” Congressman or Senator.
Oh, yeah, I forgot what I said in my last comment about stupidity in America. Never mind!