Why Are Nurses Leaving Clinical Nursing? Not Because of ER!
By: Vickie Milazzo
A couple of years ago, Baltimore's Center for Nursing Advocacy
started a letter-writing campaign against NBC and the producers of
ER. This group was protesting the episode where a central
character, nurse Abby Lockhart (actress Maura Tierney), chucked her
nursing career to go to medical school. The Baltimore group claims
the TV show "is perpetuating long-standing misrepresentations that
are contributing to the nursing shortage."
Never mind the fact that ER watched by 20 million viewers is far
from reality television. The notion that the show is contributing
to the nursing shortage is simply untrue. This TV program could
depict nursing as the most glamorous career on the planet and real
nurses would still be leaving their hospital jobs in droves.
Nurses are quitting because they are understaffed,
underappreciated, underinsured, underpaid and under-you-name-it.
Most nurses complain about the lack of respect from doctors. Sure
you hear about record-breaking salaries and bonuses, but compared
to whose record? At an average pay of $22 an hour, nurses are still
among the lowest-paid professionals in this country.
Managed care is another reason nurses are leaving the bedside. It
goes against everything our profession stands for. Under managed
care, nurses are frequently denied the opportunity to deliver the
quality of care they expect to deliver. Some patients die
unnecessarily because nurses have too little time to spend with
them. Yet when everything turns sour, nurses face more
responsibility and liability than ever.
Many nurses I know endure nightmarish schedules, working 26
weekends and five holidays a year. Nurses also face serious
on-the-job risks, such as bloodborne pathogens, latex allergies and
back injuries from those long shifts pounding hospital floors and
doing more lifting with less help. Isn't it ironic that the injured
and disabled are treating the sick? No wonder nursing numbers are
shrinking.
Speaking of disabilities, just look around at how many nurses
smoke, drink and are overweight. Such symptoms of intense stress
occur when people have too little time to properly care even for
themselves.
Nurses are finding their own answers to these dilemmas. According
to an American Nursing Association (ANA) poll, almost 19% of nurses
do not work in clinical nursing. A study by the Center for Health
Outcomes and Policy Research reveals more than 20% of hospital
registered nurses plan to leave their jobs in the next year.
The significant development is not the fact that nurses are leaving
or even why they're leaving that's obvious. The news is where they
are going. When nurses aren't valued in one arena, they take their
nursing education and expertise and go elsewhere. They develop new
careers outside traditional healthcare settings.
Maybe the Center for Nursing Advocacy should contemplate that fact.
They might even suggest that ER present an episode about a nurse
who quits her hospital job to become a Certified Legal Nurse
Consultant.
Then those 20 million ER fans would really be watching "reality
TV."
Inc. Top 10 Entrepreneur Vickie L. Milazzo, RN, MSN, JD is the founder and president of Vickie Milazzo Institute, the oldest and largest legal nurse consultant certification company. Pioneered the legal nurse consulting profession in 1982. She is the author of the self help book for women, Inside Every Woman.
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