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HEALTH REFORM: U.S. Nursing Shortage ... and My Mom
I've been reading lately about the persistent nursing shortage in the U.S. that threatens the quality of patient care. I know something about this: I was born in the Philippines—the world's leading donor of nurse labor—and many of my own relatives, including my mother, migrated to the U.S. to help fill this nursing gap. My mother studied at the University of Philippines and was trained at the Philippine General Hospital. She, like thousands of others, was exported to the U.S. and then later to Australia in the '80s where she was guaranteed a higher salary and greater opportunities. This hasn't changed much. The mass exodus of nurses from the Philippines continues today.
But with the current economic crisis, is there still a growing demand for nurses in the U.S.? Some hospitals have laid off nurses. And some senior nurses are remaining in, or rejoining, the workforce as they choose to postpone retirement or come out of retirement because of financial insecurity.
But the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) assures us that the "U.S. is in the midst of a shortage of registered nurses (RNs) that is expected to intensify as baby boomers age and the need for health care grows." An analysis by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services projects that the current nursing shortage will continue to grow in severity during the next 20 years if current trends prevail and that some states face a more severe shortage than do others." This is a sobering thought.
The shortage is not because people do not want to be nurses. Demand for nursing careers is high. Last year, AACN reported that almost 50,000 qualified applicants to nursing programs were declined. The underlying problem is the lack of nursing school faculty. The Obama Administration is paying close attention.
President Obama said during his White House Forum on Health Reform that:
Nurses provide extraordinary care. I mean, they are—they are the front lines of the health care system. And they don't get paid very well. Their working conditions aren't as good as they should be. And when it comes to nurse faculty, they get paid even worse than active nurses. So what happens is, is that it is very difficult for a nurse practitioner to go into teaching, because they're losing money.
HealthLeaders Media reports that:
President Barack Obama has requested $125 million for the federal Nursing Education Loan Repayment Program (NELRP). In addition, the president has asked lawmakers to increase federal Nurse Faculty Loan Program (NFLP) resources by 40 percent over 2008 funding levels as part of the $1 billion allocated for health care workforce development in the fiscal year 2010 budget.
Some states are also taking action. In Texas last year, nursing schools turned away some 8,000 qualified applicants, primarily because there weren't enough faculty to teach them. The Texas Legislature recently committed $30 million in new upfront funding for nursing schools to expand starting this fall. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce Foundation have announced a $22 million five-year initiative designed to ensure that New Jersey will have the nursing workforce it needs to meet its future health care demands.
Addressing the nursing shortage (as well as larger issues about our primary care work force) is important in the grand scheme of health reform. As we try to get all Americans high quality affordable health care coverage, we will need more nurses to provide high quality health care and take on many of the challenges of care coordination, patient education, disease management and preventive care.
Health Reform concern for nurses
The reform solution needs to be very careful in its actions. Nurses will be the front line in its side effects. A regulated pay solution will result in limited spending already seen in Medicare. Nurses will be the first to get pay cuts when hospitals are forced to charge less for a service where there is no private service to eat the cost. A single pay solution will result in rationing of services provided, meaning layoffs for nurses.
The reform needs to find the equilibrium of high quality health care and optimal costs without burdening the health care work force. Only the private market can achieve this as Medicare is already shown to be 30% waste and fraud.
health care reform in the US
It is not so that only the private market can achieve this.
Universal health care works well as long as there is a public accountability framework in place and job security and protection for workers.
These elements provide the foundation for public protection and client advocacy.
Legislation supports the provision of service to the consumer and unions provide for job security so that workers can focus on delivery of care in the public interest and not the interest of the employer.
Health care reform in the United States will require much more than readjusting the system.
It will require readjustment of attitudes and values and beliefs so that the majority of people in the US believe in the moral obligation of accessible health care. You have to do it because it is the right thing to do. Once that is decided then you have a find a way to do it but the moral obligation is paramount.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Universal-Health-Care---Ethical-Issues-in-Heal...
Healthcare Reform for Nursing Homes
Today's quality of care in nursing homes is measurable to the Holocaust.
Beware:
My mother suffered and was killed by Sun Healthcare Group Inc's Sunbridge nursing home in Newport Beach, Calif where they refused to repair/replace known broken equipment while under a Calif state injunction for having killed patients in Burlingame, Calif years earlier. The Dept of Justice turned a blind eye. The Dept of Health didn't fine the usual $100,000 for her death. But their own medical director, Dr Stoney, wrote an opinion SUN killed her and he'd quit due to their disregard to his pleas and other families' pleas for help.
They produce profits at the at the cost of elder abuse and manslaughter.
And the reason they can't sue me for saying this is they didn't pay me to sign a confidentiality agreement after my attorney threatened me with bodily harm for their CEO in mediation. I sued him for malpractice and he died 2 weeks later, I won that case. SUN not only cheated me, but cheated the state of Calif. taxpayers out of millions of dollars in fines the injunction would have cost for killing the five patients I witnessed die due to their neglect SUN, had the Dept of Justice done their job properly. Political connections disgust me.
Deborah Calvert daughter of the late Evelyn Calvert, Newport Beach, California
949 548-2080
debdeb2080@hotmail.com
Wisdom:
It has been said that the true character of a people is shown by how they treat their most vulnerable: the very young, the sick, and the old. By that standard, the richest country in the world looks positively vicious for its treatment of the sick and the old compared to the "undeveloped" and "underdeveloped" countries I have been to. In those places, the old and sick do not have shiny high tech equipment or the latest cure all from Big Pharma or a trained nurse let alone a doctor to attend them. But the sick have someone there all the time to give them water or a bit of food, to turn them or adjust a pillow, to listen or talk or just sit with them. The old are treated with respect, provided good and often the best food as well as first choice of what other comforts are available, and listened to for their wisdom. Yes, of course, people die younger and often of easily curable diseases in those places. But what value is there in living longer if your pain is magnified by neglect and isolation? If your caretakers are under-trained, under-respected, underpaid, and so overworked they can't give your the care they know you should have? If you can be "transferred" away from family and friends without warning on the "business decision" of some faceless, nameless corporate bureaucrat? If you are little but a profit source to be discarded without compunction, even some relief, when you "underperform"? Better, I think, a shorter life with some dignity than a longer one as a mere commodity. If we are at ease treating old and sick people, at least those not among the plutocrats, as commodities who's whole value is profitability, why not set children to labor (including sexual labor --good profit there) and harvest the organs of the sick? No, no, we couldn't do that, we value life! That reply reminds me of an Oscar Wilde story. Seems the wit leaned over to a handsome young lady at dinner to ask if she would sleep with him for a million pounds; when she readily agree he asked if she would sleep with him for ten pounds; "what," she cried, "do you take me for a whore?"; Oscar replied, "we've settled that matter already; we're just haggling over price." Americans have settled the matter that we are already greedy souls. We're just working out how to maximize profitability.
Sunbridge nursing homes
What Mrs. Calvert stated above is a concern for all of us. The nursing shortage is one thing, but when big corporation exercises their power and kill patients in this manner we should all worry. Why did they get away with it? Didn't the local news pick up on her story? I don't know how I would handle her situation if my mother were harmed. Healthcare reform is a real need and this is a perfect example.
Sun Healthcare
I'm a friend of Debbie Calvert's and I knew her mother. She was a wonderful mother and a kind, sweet woman who would feed anyone in the neighborhood who was hungry. This is a nightmare for all of us. When we get old and need nursing care is this what we want for our selves?
We need to reform nursing homes before the baby boommers reach the age we need them too.
Sun Healthcare owes her for the damage they've obviously done to her mother. They need to pay the other families they've hurt too.
I hope the country takes note -this is not acceptable.
Cindy Gray,
Costa Mesa, California
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