I work in healthcare, in a hospital that still makes a profit, yet has laid off about 10% of its workforce to stay lean and maintain a good bond rating. I understand that it's all about the money. Money makes the world go round. I really do get it. But, we are cutting staff, increasing nurse-patient ratios, and spending money on questionable improvements (a medication administration system that doesn't half work and takes twice as long). How are we going to maintain our current level of patient satisfaction? How are we going to keep from killing people?
This weekend, a patient was rushed to the cath lab, intubated, place on the balloon pump and then sent to CICU, all because the problem wasn't caught earlier. That's not to say that she wouldn't have ended up in this very same situation, but maybe, if we'd caught it sooner, she could have gotten treatment sooner and avoided the vent and balloon pump. In this case, we'll never know. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Nurses are stretched beyond their capability. We have a state board, but they have no real authority over the hospital. It is our administrators who tell us how many patients we have and what systems we will use to care for them.
I see it getting worse. As healthcare expenses skyrocket, and they always do, hospitals are looking for ways to cut costs and they always cut staff first. Why is that? We might be the greatest percentage of the budget, but there's a good reason for that, we do the work! I'm not an economist, I don't pretend to be a financial genius, and I'm only a few classes into my master's in healthcare administration, but I can see that cutting back on your most valuable resource in order to save money is foolish. You may save in the short run, but the long term effects will be disastrous.
I worry for my job. I worry for my patients. I worry for the future of healthcare. I no longer see it as the difference between American healthcare and European healthcare (which up to now has been inferior), but it could be the end of healthcare as we know it. What will we do when hospitals can no longer stay open? Personally, I don't do this for free. I require a paycheck, and when that stops, I stop nursing and look for other employment. So when my salary falls, or my job at the hospital is cut, I'm out. I will no longer be serving my community as a nurse. I'm not the only one who feels like this, and without American nurses, America is dead in the water. So my question is, when will this end? And what will we look like when it does?
