[unpolloloco]

When push comes to shove, 99.x% of healthcare professionals get it. So we're taking a rounding error in staffing. The problem is how many nurses just got up and quit in the past couple years

[lotsofpulp]

> The problem is how many nurses just got up and quit in the past couple years

Hence the problem is lack of sufficient compensation for their quality of life at work.

[unpolloloco]

Agreed! The job got a lot worse and extracurricular demands shot up, so people quit. How do you get them back? Pay more.

[another_story]

A lot of these nurses will not go back, pay raise or not. Sister gets inundated with offers 2x to sometimes 3x her current pay, but she'd rather avoid the stress. Many of her former coworkers have also moved on.

[lotsofpulp]

How about 4x, 5x, or 6x pay? I would throw my own hat in the ring for $800k/year.

The job is not hard in the sense that only a few people in the world possess the capacity to do it.

Society needs to decide what it values more - quality bedside care in hospitals to people that cannot afford to pay out of pocket, or paying people a lot to sling spreadsheets to each other from the comfort of their home.

[maxerickson]

Are you a licensed or registered nurse?

If not, your willingness to do the job doesn't matter, not at any price.

[lotsofpulp]

Why would it not? Staffing for healthcare workers had been barebones for a long time before Covid.

Obviously, the acute situation of today, I would not count. But when managing a society, and you pay rock bottom prices and lower quality of life for a couple decades to limit supply of healthcare workers so that you are running on razor thin margins, then the future where lack of healthcare workers in cases of emergency are inevitable.

[ss108]

I think his point is that, for 800k a year, he'd be sufficiently incentivized to try and get licensed.

[BobbyJo]

The question then becomes 'who can afford care?'

If costs to go to a hospital double overnight, we may end up with worse problems than a staff shortage.

[lotsofpulp]

That was my underlying point. All of these problems are a problem of society’s willingness to spend x resources on y cause, and it should get very interesting as the population pyramid gets much older than ever before in the world’s history.

For example, I am not enthused at directing a lot of society’s resources at sustaining 80+ year olds while our kids are not well taken care. But that is a different topic.

[meepmorp]

But if they pay more, they’ll need to keep paying more even after the crisis is past. Which is pretty much what hospitals are trying to avoid.

[donkarma]

The only reason this disease was such a big issue was because hospitals were constantly operating on slim margins in the first place with ICUs regularly filling up in winter. How about some breathing room for all involved?

[meepmorp]

Did you miss the bit about the money, though?

The sad thing is, this kind of money oriented, employee exploiting attitude is just as prevalent among academic and non-profit hospitals as the for profit ones.

[throwaway55421]

If my boss suddenly invented a new demand on me and said "do this or you're fired", I might do it whilst making plans to quit as well.

In fact I have.

[ceh123]

Mandated vaccines in healthcare settings aren’t a new demand though. It’s more like a certificate that takes an hour is added to the list of 8 other certificates you need to maintain.