Americans Are Working So Hard It’s Actually Killing People

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/labor/americans-are-working-so-hard-its-actually-killing-people

Jessica Wheeler works the night shift as an oncology nurse at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital in northeastern Pennsylvania—but her patients are usually wide awake. “When they have a new cancer diagnosis or they’re going to have a biopsy in the morning, they don’t sleep,” says the 25-year-old Wheeler (which is not her real name). “They’re scared.” Other patients are in their final hours of life, surrounded by grieving family. What she wants is to be there to comfort them, to talk them through those difficult hours, to hold their hands and attend to their pain. But, mostly, she can’t.

According to hospital policy, night nurses on her floor should care for no more than six and a half patients, but they typically have ten. When things go bad with one or two, the floor quickly tips into chaos.

Wheeler recalls one night when she had a patient who couldn’t breathe and several others under her care. “I called the supervisor to ask for anybody—a nursing assistant, anybody! And I didn’t get it, and my patient ended up coding.” Another night, Wheeler had a post-op patient who required constant attention; the patient was confused and sick, and she soon escaped her restraints and pulled out her drains, spraying fecal matter all over the wall. Early the next morning, her heartbeat became irregular just as another patient was dying. “Those nights are scary,” Wheeler says. “I think I’ve seen everybody on our floor cry.”

Another young nurse describes a shift when she had only been on the job a few months and was saddled with ten patients, including one whose incision was leaking badly, requiring her to administer blood all night long. “I was drowning,” the nurse says. She called for help multiple times, but it never came. At the 7 am shift change, she confused two patients’ blood-sugar numbers and medicated the wrong one.

[liberal N proud]

1. Then there is this...

Not Taking a Vacation Is Costing You an Insane Amount

Last year, American workers walked away from $52.4 billion in unused vacation time, forfeiting a total of 169 million paid days off, according to the U.S. Travel Association. While it’s well-known that American companies are less freewheeling with paid time off than their counterparts in other industrialized countries, it seems that a lot of workers here don’t even take the allotment they do get.

The amount of vacation we take as a nation is at a 40-year low, USTA says. As recently as 2000, the average worker took roughly 20 vacation days a year. By last year, that had fallen to 16 days. For most workers, wages and income have stagnated since the recession. But for all the complaining we do about our paltry paychecks, a lot of us are willing to literally work for free.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/not-taking-a-vacation-is-costing-you-an-insane-amount/ar-BBcIagL

I take every day of vacation that I am permitted.

[Bibliovore]

9. Many companies let you carry only a limited amount of paid leave...

...either from month to month or from year to year, but don't always provide backup or approve days off in time to use that time before it's pulled from the books.

A similar serious issue is unpaid overtime. Lots of salaried workers regularly work over 40 hours per week, and very few don't do so occasionally.

(From the headline, I'd thought this article was going to be about people working themselves to death and into dangerous medical conditions, rather than about nurses being overworked to patients' detriment.)

[Moostache]

10. I am happy for you to be able to take your vacation days....

For many of us, that is simply NOT an option.

The reality is that those who are not in a corner office or executive level - the mid-level managers and floor workers - exist in a different space. There is an unspoken expectation that being off from your job is not being dedicated enough. I have the responsibilities of 3 workers from 10 years ago. Through "promotions" and "attrition", I have seen my work load increase annually to the point that if I am gone for a week or more it takes me a month to get to the point that I can stop doing 60+ hour weeks to compensate and catch up.

When you use vacation and then feel that the consequences of using it are not worth the aggravation of catching up from it, there is a major problem. This maniacal mindset is also a HUGE reason many people are resentful of the poor now. I can understand how some people in similar situations would be embittered and view the people who are not currently getting the opportunity to work at all as being a convenient scape goat....one that the GOP and the bosses are all too happy to exploit.

The bottom line is that unless the job market turns around and the DEMAND side economics drive things, instead of continuing to allow SUPPLY side economic policies to steal more and more from labor while handing it over to capital, we will not see this change much if at all...

[annabanana]

16. Absolutely great post.. Put your finger on the whole shebang, there...

Getting us to fight over table scraps.. "right sizing" etc etc.

Until people have money to spend, the economy will continue to rust in place.

[Skidmore]

2. I've been saying for years that

we need a massive general strike.

[daleanime]

3. Amen....

[a kennedy]

4. I've had two women say they didn't take all their vacation because they're so BUSY at work!!!!

and they felt they would lose ground in the company if they did take vacation. This is just nuts.....how many weeks do some european countries take 4 - 5 weeks?? D*mn this country is messed up.

[Brigid]

5. The nineteenth century called.

It wants its labor practices back.

[suffragette]

13. Exactly so. Its robber barons, too.

[fasttense]

6. Not to mention all they people who go to work sick

Sick people working seems to be they norm here in rural TN. Running errands on Saturday, I counted 5 people coughing and sneezing. And I only counted the people behind the counter.

[Enthusiast]

7. Corporations would gladly return us to the days of 19th Century labor standards.

Or lack of labor standards.

Most people don't know what 19th Century labor standards means.

I fear they are about to find out.

[Yo_Mama]

8. Short-staffing nurses is a very serious problem that threatens the average patient's life n/t

[ReRe]

11. This is a fact...

... especially with hospital nurses. The shortage of nursing care is killing patients physically, and morally killing nurses. I have a niece who is a registered nurse in a NYC hospital. She comes home in tears and almost in shock, after 12 solid hours of work with only a couple bathroom breaks and a drink of something as she passes the nurses station to and from rooms from one end of her ward to another.

Healthcare should never have been privatized, er. capitalized.

[diabeticman]

12. Republicans think that is the New American Dream. They want us to forget the idea of a home

2 cars, high education for kids, family vacations and retiring at an age where you can enjoy your retirement.

[malthaussen]

14. Well, those nurses should just do what they love!

Then they wouldn't work a day in their lives!

-- Mal

[annabanana]

19. missing sarcasm tag

I hope

[malthaussen]

20. I never use those things.

If I have to label it, I did it wrong.

-- Mal

[marmar]

15. K/R

[SheilaT]

17. The other thing that bothers me about nurses' workload

is that they typically are scheduled for a twelve hour shift. I don't care that they then only work three days -- although plenty of them work a fourth, sometimes a fifth in a week -- because at the end of an eight hour shift caring for patients they're exhausted. Then four more hours?

On top of that, patients are overall much sicker than they used to be, since hospital stays have been shortened so much. You're sent home just barely into the recovery period. If there were a good system in place for home health care it might not be so bad, but to get a visit from such a person is nearly unheard of.

And not using vacation, while all too common, is nuts. But I get it that people can't be away from the job very long because there's no one else to fill in for them. I know people who use up their vacation, but only ever take a couple of days at a time, which isn't long enough to relax. You don't have to go off for two weeks in the South of France, but two weeks just chilling at home could be wonderful.

I do wish more people would just do what they can accomplish in the 40 hours, and then if they're not actually paid for the overtime, go home.

[NCjack]

18. Makes Newt proud. nt

[NC_Nurse]

21. I quit in May. I am hoping to stay out of nursing for the foreseeable future.

Our medical system is a clusterf*ck and I am sick of it. I will not risk patient safety and my own mental health anymore. The job has become just another corporate nightmare where nothing counts but the bottom line.

Americans don't care about their health until it's gone. Then they suddenly get interested in how bad the system is, but they don't seem to see how they have contributed to the problem. It's like infrastructure. Everyone uses it, but nobody wants to pay for it. Of course, when it's THEIR family member that's ill, they are perfectly willing to bitch and complain about how they are not getting the first class care they expect here in the richest country in the world.

Guess what people, the money isn't going into serving the public. It's not going into the salaries and benefits for the people serving the public either. It's going to some corporate stooge in the executive suite who is more concerned about the price of the stock and his/her bonus.

End of rant

[whereisjustice]

22. Thank the MBA revolution of 1980s, like education, health care is about exploiting people's

weaknesses to make maximum profits. These industries exploit people's weaknesses and inability to defend themselves, threaten them with a lifetime of crippling poverty or illness and then fuck them over repeatedly at the cash register as they try to improve their lives and provide for their families.

And we all saw what CDC Director Tom Frieden did (which should have had him immediately fired). Every time he opened his mouth he was spewing lies and bullshit about nursing staff in an effort to cover his own ass.

Even within a party that allegedly supports the "little guy", posters here were lock step with Frieden's march of the idiots.

It's not just a Republican thing.

It's called American Exceptionalism, the product created by a gilded class of douchebags who have seized control of our social and economic infrastructures.

[Runningdawg]

23. I left nursing in 2001

after the hospitals employee health service misdiagnosed (or ignored) a serious infection. I was rushed to the ER and coded, then to surgery and spent a week in ICU. I was still in the ICU when my supervisor came into my room and told me I was being suspended for 10 days without pay. You see, I was the nurse who was on emergency call for the OR that night. I was suspended for "not being available for call". How is that for irony?? Adding insult to injury was the bankruptcy.
After nearly 20+ years as a nurse, it was the final straw. I found a job in another field. That was the hardest time I have ever had getting a job. People would take a look at my work history and ask WHY aren't you still a nurse? Now that I have a new work history, I never mention my medical experience on applications or resumes. It's easier to just say I was a housewife during those years.
What I was, was a pawn in an industry where the only people treated worse than the patients are those caring for them.

[deafskeptic]

27. That's just wrong! n/t

[Doctor_J]

24. The healthcare industry's function is not to provide healthcare. it's to maximize

profits. Period. Another nurse on duty would cut into the profits. That is why there isn't another nurse there.

[Omaha Steve]

25. K&R!

[Warpy]

26. I've had too many of those nights to count

Last edited Tue Nov 4, 2014, 04:15 AM - Edit history (1)

When they speak primly of nurse burnout, what they're tapdancing around is nurse PTSD.

Conditions in hospitals now that profit is king are horrific for nurses.

"Drowning" is exactly what it feels like.

ETA: Shakespeare had it wrong. First against the wall should be anyone with an MBA.