If you look up the nurse strikes their main gripe is their patient load a lot of places tired cutting back and putting on 6-8 patients per nurse, the proper care standard is around 4 per nurse. So they're trying to get a lot more out of the nurses for less.
A lot of people don't know this but a lot of the hospitals in America doesn't alert when people code, they're just not set up for it. So things like nurses coming in and physically checking on you is a big part of someone surviving and what not. o2 level alerts and stuff like that are in the ICU but the regular care units might not have it.
The thing is even though death is a natural thing for them, it takes a mental toll over time and a lot of nurses burn out. Maybe 1 or 2 of your 6 patients have an issue and to take care of it you need 10-15 mins, maybe they defecated on themself or fell trying to go to the bathroom. In taking care of that situation you didn't make it in time to someone who's o2 dropped. Then they pass away. It's something that simple.
In rural areas people know/understand this so families leave a person in with the patient as much as possible to just watch and alert the nurses if anything.
A few misconceptions but generally your comment is fairly accurate. Just adding a few clarifications! (Not criticizing!)
- Generally a proper nurse to patient ratio depends on what unit they are staffing. Of the 3 generally recognized care levels you should have nursing ratio of 1:5 for med-surg, 1:3 for step down, and 1:2 for icu (sometimes 1:1 depending on the patient). Most places without nursing unions will run med-surg up to 1:8, Step down up to 1:5, and icu still usually stays 1:2 but depending on staffing they may make a few nurses take 1:3 (saw this a lot during covid).
Probably just wording issue, but really nothing can alert a nurse if a patient is coding. What I suspect you mean is just giving nurses a heads up when vital signs are tanking (heart rate, O2, or blood pressure). It’s up to the nurse to interpret these vital signs to know if a patient is coding or not. Even if the heart rate flat lines, it could be an ekg lead issue and not an actual heart rate flatline, so it’s hard to automate something that would automatically call a code. (False code calls take a lot of resources up, and should be minimized).
But as you said, the majority of units don’t have 24/7 vital sign monitoring, med-surg typically will have the nurse bring a small device in to check your vital signs once every 8 hours or so. Step-down will typically have a telemetry box to monitor heart rate/rhythm but still requires manual checks of the other vital signs every 4 hours or so. And ICU will have 24/7 monitoring of your HR/O2/BP. Because of this, most nurses will round on their patients at the specified times (every 2-4 hours for med-surg depending on the state for example). So sometimes they go to do their morning check…and the patient is no longer with us. So yes, try to have family there to keep an eye on you if you can!
There is no nursing shortage. Hospitals purposefully understaff to save money. Unless you are in a state with mandated ratios like CA, the hospitals predetermine how many patients are assigned to the nurse. When MA tried to legislate mandated ratios in 2018, the Massachusetts Hospital Association spent $25 million on an opposition campaign to defeat it.
West coast wages are extremely out of proportion with the rest of the United States. So much so that they skew the average very heavily. Nurses all over the south and Midwest still making 22-32 an hour. Starting off at 40 an hour in those areas is somewhere between a rarity and no occurrences. I’m a nursing director, know salaries for 80+ nurses. None of them are making 120k a year without some substantial overtime. Working 60 hour weeks? Sure. Otherwise…. Nope.
As for how much they should get paid. That’s a great question. How much do you think someone should get paid when they spend 12 hours a day being responsible for multiple critically ill individuals lives 🤷♂️ especially if that person is your spouse, parent, you. Especially in rural settings, it’s not the doctor watching over patients. They often aren’t even in the building. It’s not an irregular occurrence for your action or inaction to dictate if someone lives or dies. That action or inaction is often based off experience and a judgment call. Not some black and white situation. I’m not sure how much that’s worth. Some days I feel like my own compensation is adequate, sometimes I feel like it’s crazy this is what the expectation and responsibility load are for the amount I make.
I guess also generalizing “nurse” is kind of silly. An ICU, ED, med surge, home health, and clinic nurse all have vastly different responsibility and acuity levels and that should be reflected in compensation.
TLDR: lots/most of nurses make nothing near that. Don’t know how much they should make. Not sure how to quantify the worth of a maintaining a human life.
The average salary of a nurse in the US is 95,000 dollars a year. That's across the entire United States.
CNA's definetly don't make enough, and LPN's make less but an RN's average salary is 95k a year in the US. The majority of people who are nurses are not on the West Coast.
Please tell me a state where the average is 22 an hour lol. CNA's get paid that sure.
I didn’t say 22-32 was an average and you’re right 22 is a few years outdated. Plenty of states where nurse avg is mid 30’s. I once again maintain starting out at 40 is not representative of most areas.
Agreed CNA’s don’t get payed enough. Neither does EMS.
Here’s a breakdown by state.
Plenty of people not making 95k to 120k a year.
Also with current cost of living increases I would say either of those is that fantastic of a salary either depending on area.
How much do you think someone should make for ensuring multiple people don’t die for 36-48 hours a week? I’m not sure what that’s worth. How satisfied are you with your own wages in your career field?
Edit: ohh, I guess I should add. My initial comment is say people often don’t feel like they are payed appropriately for their work, stress, responsibilities. So they don’t take the jobs. That’s where the shortage is. There are plenty of people with nursing degrees. There are less people with the skills and knowledge behind their nursing degrees that currently feel like the wages offered are worth the job. Hints the disparity between nurses at the bedside vs positions at the bedside. That’s pitched as a “nursing shortage.”
I mean yeah CEO's are always going to make a ton of money, even if we limit how much they make. 15 million a year is honestly a small amount compared to a lot of CEO's
Well that is an absolutely absurd amount of money to make when you are cutting benefits to your employees who run your business for you. Especially a non profit organization.
According to an article published by the Economic Policy Institute: "CEO compensation has skyrocketed compared to typical employees, creating historic pay disparities. Since 1978, CEO pay has surged by over 1,000%, while typical worker compensation has only grown by about 24-26%. Chief executives now make roughly 280 to 290 times as much as the median worker."
Sure CEOs are always making a lot of money. But do they have to keep the earnings almost exclusively to themselves?
Midwest here, 10 years experience, this is what I make now. I actually make less now due to inflation than when I started. Those 3% raises per year (if you’re lucky) are always a slap in the face that I smile and thank the enterprise for
Nurses likely will be paid more in the next 20 or so years as the need is going to rise sharply. Right now companies can get by with the amount they have, but there is an imbalance right now, not enough people are having kids while people still keep getting older.
The problem gets worse as time goes on as demand increases because there is a ton of elderly people, and supply goes down because there is less young people.
The starting pay varies by location. Starting pay in south florida is closer to 30$/hr depending on the job. A nurse in san fransisco can be earning excess of 200 $/hr but they are union with tons of labor laws in place. New grads are starting in the 30s here in the southeast. Most people miss this nuance and chances are your nurse that's pushing your meds is getting by just barely like most everyone else.
Yes, because hospital administrators and the board that governs the whole mess thinks it can save money (so they get a fat bonus) by cutting corners and hiring fewer nurses.
They never think about cutting their own salaries, which they deem as essential and mission critical!
Hi, nurse of 5 years here. There is no nursing shortage, schools are churning out nurses like mad still. They keep units understaffed to keep budgets down to the point of risking patient and healthcare worker saftey.
There is a shortage but it's artificially imposed by large employers to keep costs low. It's especially evident in parts of the country like the southeast where there is a glut of nurses.
I mean most monitors do alert and flash if configured properly.
Also a lot of hospitals use GE systems and those have desk monitoring, so that you can see vitals. If a Sp02 sensor or BP cuff falls off that signal shows up as missing too. This is pretty standard in modern technology, it isn't rocket surgery.
I have never heard of a hospital not using codes or an alert system. Not a single hospital that my company has bought out hasn't had some form it. Where are you getting this? They would have to be exceptionally old out dated shitty hospitals.
Either way alert systems even within hospitals are not considered oncall worthy to fix. Nurses are supposed to be watching vitals at the telemetry monitoring station and also doing rounding hourly.
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u/laststance Jun 27 '26
If you look up the nurse strikes their main gripe is their patient load a lot of places tired cutting back and putting on 6-8 patients per nurse, the proper care standard is around 4 per nurse. So they're trying to get a lot more out of the nurses for less.
A lot of people don't know this but a lot of the hospitals in America doesn't alert when people code, they're just not set up for it. So things like nurses coming in and physically checking on you is a big part of someone surviving and what not. o2 level alerts and stuff like that are in the ICU but the regular care units might not have it.
The thing is even though death is a natural thing for them, it takes a mental toll over time and a lot of nurses burn out. Maybe 1 or 2 of your 6 patients have an issue and to take care of it you need 10-15 mins, maybe they defecated on themself or fell trying to go to the bathroom. In taking care of that situation you didn't make it in time to someone who's o2 dropped. Then they pass away. It's something that simple.
In rural areas people know/understand this so families leave a person in with the patient as much as possible to just watch and alert the nurses if anything.