|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Addressing South Carolina’s Looming Nursing Shortage
“The numbers are too stark to be ignored …”
previous post
next post
6 comments
Red States can expect to experience shortages of medical professionals going forward.
The most diseased and dangerous States to live in are all Red States. Passing legislation that runs medical professionals away won’t end well.
Also, SC is one of the lowest paying States for nurses.
Too bad your Republican overlords are waging war on immigrant.
You should expect nurses and doctors to be in short supply when you chain them to debt slavery to get into their fields and screw them over completely during times of crisis like the country did during the pandemic. Working them like dogs and thinking free pizza is going to make up for it… There are simple solutions to things like this but conservatives can’t think beyond the shackles of their ideology to even begin to fix anything.
FYI–the nursing shortage is already here and it’s already critical. I’ve been at a relative’s bedside for over a week now. The concept of “traveling nurses” has ruined SC hospitals. They can get paid far more and “see the world” and they are never coming back because why would they? They can get paid 2-3 times as much elsewhere. What exactly is the lure to get them back? Because their departure has meant super high case loads for those who remain. The other big issue is the lackadaisical nursing assistants, half of whom don’t do anything but collect a paycheck. The hospital is apparently afraid to fire them b/c of fear of a civil rights lawsuit. The number of complaints from staff I’ve heard is mind-boggling, and the hospital management absolutely, positively do not care. ER wait times are as much as 10-12 hours at this facility. Building more/creating more nurse prep programs will NOT help if they flee the state ASAP b/c of the monopoly a few hospital systems now have in our state. And speaking of those new education programs, if SC educated students can’t get into these medical programs b/c our schools suck so hard (private and public)–what difference will adding more post-sec programs in nursing do exactly? Just create more “travel nurses” who will take off the second they graduate. The irony here is that these hospitals are now having to hire travel nurses to fill those slots and then those nurses get paid 2-3x what a nurse who stays gets. what’s their incentive exactly to stay there? The only way out of either critical shortage in this state is to cut CEO & hospital management pay and reallocate those funds to the nursing staff, hire more assistants and fire those who refuse to work. But they will never do any of those things–god forbid a problem gets solved in SC and a 1% doesn’t get their high pay and bonuses.
This^^^
I am an RN in SC and have been since the last century. At the very top of the nursing pay scale at MUSC my one bedroom one bath simple modest apartment is 65% of my monthly pay. Nurses especially in SC do not make enough money. The insurance industry makes all the money in healthcare.