NURSE SHORTAGE: CALIFORNIA RNS STRETCHED TO THE LIMIT
"Experienced registered nurses, often considered expendableThis is part of the California Healthline Daily Edition, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.
during this decade of managed care, now are stretched so thin
that many California hospitals are scrambling to hire more, and
some RNs already on the wards fear patient care is being
compromised," the Los Angeles Times reports. Making the
situation even worse in Southern California, "a mighty flu
epidemic has flooded emergency rooms and intensive care units
with patients." One Cedars-Sinai Medical Center nurse who wished
to remain anonymous said, "I think ... it's dangerous. The
number of nurses for patients at times is unsafe." While
conceding that nurses had to work extra shifts, Cedars-Sinai
chief nursing officer Linda Burnes-Bolton "denied that staffing
ever has been insufficient or unsafe."
CALLING ALL NURSES
In Northern California, the "overall nursing shortage ... is
most pronounced in specialty areas," according to Kaiser
Permanente's regional director of nursing Doloras Jones. "This
is just the tip of the iceberg," she said. In the future there
will be "a crisis of supply" ... [and] the "need will be
particularly great for nurses with bachelor's or graduate
degrees," said Jones. The California Nurses Association has
"called upon Gov. Pete Wilson [R] ... to declare an 'emergency
care crisis' prohibiting acute care and emergency room closures
and any further downsizing," reports the Times.
AMERICA'S MOST WANTED
According to health care experts, an "aging" and retiring
"nurse work force"; "cutbacks on inpatient beds and staffing as a
result of managed care; an unexpectantly large influx of sicker
patients; closure or scaling down of nursing schools and hospital
training programs and expansion of opportunities for young women
in the work force outside hospitals" are among some of the
reasons for the shortage of nurses. To compensate, hospitals are
in "a bidding war" for specialty nurses. Incentives such as
"signing bonuses, housing allowances, special training -- even
free or discounted meals on site" are being offered by hospitals
trying to entice nurses to work for them. Some health care
experts say "hospitals are paying the price for ill-considered,
overzealous cost-cutting in the early 1990s, as managed care took
hold." Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California
Nurses Association, said, "Health care corporations didn't like
the idea they had to pay a primarily female work force so much
money. ... They pushed nurses out the door, devalued the
profession. They (corporations) are the victims of their own
designs." Others disagree. Jones said "the cutbacks and
downsizing in hospitals came in response to declining inpatient
counts" and now "the increased demand requires some 'rebuilding'"
(Marquis, 1/16).