SusanRosenthal.com – Solidarity is the Best Medicine

2 Comments For This Post

1. roxan lucan Says:
   July 12th, 2008 at 5:30 pm

   July 7/07

   I don’t know where you practice but the conditions you describe as so deplorable in Canada i.,e. nursing shortage, dirty hospitals, etc. are true of the US in spades.

   When HMOs came in during the 1990s, nursing staff was cut by 50% in the Philadelphia PA area where I nurse. A few months later, cut another 50%–it took me a year to find my first job due to such an excess of experienced nurses.

   At that time, they also stopped training new nurses in ’specialties’ such as ER, OR, etc. Now, they complain they can’t find any. Wonder why?

   The nurses who had experience and were laid off have now retired or quit nursing in disgust, and no new grads were trained. Nor did any of the hospitals or nursing homes rehire to former levels. We continued to work with only 1/4 of the necessary staff.

   When I complained to management, I was told, “This is the way we want things. Shut up.” I got the picture. There are actually more nurses out there than realtors. They just refuse to destroy their bodies working like slaves.

   There IS no nursing shortage. That’s the way they save money. Similarly,many hospitals in Philly at that time, fired their cleaning staff and thought the RNs should scrub the floors, change light bulbs, etc, in addition to performing the tasks of the (no longer existent) IV stick team, respiratory therapy team, EKG team, and any other allied health team you can name.

   I am not speaking of some ghetto hospital but the top hospitals in the City, some of which now sit boarded up. I am speaking from personal experience.

   Likewise, most psych wards and facilities were closed. Then, it was nursing homes going bankrupt and changing hands several times a year.

   Meanwhile, there are ever more rules and regs that seem to change daily, ever more paperwork to waste our time. Constant State inspections that focus only on our notes, hoping to find some small error so they can take our license. Oh, and all the cupboards have to be clean and the coats hung up. They are not interested in how the patients are. Like everything else, it is a sham.

   Sometimes I have no medications for patients, or even the supplies to do wound care. I used to have 25 patients, then it went up to 30-40. Then, I moved down South, thinking a small town would be better–forget it! Here it’s 60-80 patients at less than 1/2 the pay. And during all this, I have no insurance. Now, tell me again, how bad medical care is in Canada.

2. Susan Rosenthal Says:
   July 12th, 2008 at 5:36 pm

   July 7/07

   Roxan: The conditions you describe are outrageous! No question that America’s medical system is worse than Canada’s. However, Canada’s system is far from adequate and deteriorating rapidly.

   We can’t let ourselves be tricked into thinking that the lesser evil is the best we can do. We deserve much better than that on both sides of the border.

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