I'm friends with quite a few nurses, primarily travel nurses, and not a single one is considering a change in career that I am aware of. Simply an anecdotal counterpoint and nothing more.
They're paid a shit ton more. And because of that, more nurses are quitting to do the travel thing, which worsens the shortage and increases demand for travel nurses ;-) never seen an industry fuck itself over so bad. That's really the issue - healthcare has become an industry, not a profession.
It's really amazing to see travel nurses come back to work at a place they just left. They are now doing the same job as before, are getting paid almost twice as much with better schedules and are working next to people that they know and are friends with.
It's honestly surprising that more haven't taken the jump and is really shocking that hospitals aren't doing more to retain critical staff.
Its hilarious that nursing shares this problem with the tech industry and probably with most other industries. Every company is extremely allergic to giving raises and is happy to let their workforce churn constantly. You would think they believe that experience has no value.
But on the hiring side, experience is one of the most widely accepted signals of value.
1. Hospitals pay their nurses $X, which is way too low
2. Nurses quit because they're underpaid and overworked
3. Hospitals have a nurse staffing crisis and so pay travel nurses 2 * $X (or more!)
4. Hospitals are in a panic over the cost of travel nurses, yet instead of paying their nurses more to keep them around and eliminate the need for travel nurses, they ask the government to cap the cost of travel nurses
My mind is exploding over the ridiculousness of it.
Then increase the pay even more or increase the quality of life at work.
Instead of $250k, halve the work load somehow and make it two $125k.
If there is no number, then society cannot afford it.
But this is nursing, not trying to find ways around the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If nurses received $300k/year income, then there probably would not be a shortage since the barrier to entry is not that high.
If we really want to get down to the nitty gritty of it, most people cannot afford quality nurse care (or doctors or hospitals). So the question really comes down to how much wealth is society willing to redistribute to those who need it in the form of healthcare?
The point is that I know nurses that make 200k a year and still complain about the workload. More nurses and better hours is the solution. Meanwhile the trend is to make it more and more difficult to become a nurse and higher and higher for hospitals to have nurses
Not even close if you are talking about the USA (and actual nurses, not CNA's or MAs) - starting pay for 2 year RN degrees near me are about 55-65K, and you easily go over 100K in a few years.
While technically true, what we're trying to avoid is forcing the market to find a way that may include an interim period of extremely bad outcomes before correcting itself
A travel nurse means you just have to work across town you dont have to travel out of state, out of country, or to middle of nowhere. And these people are bringing in 5k a week currently. None of them are leaving.
Funny you should mention that… reading all of this, I was thinking of a podcast interview with a nurse who was retiring from hospital work. His primary reason for leaving was being tired of fighting with hospital ownership and administration, and was planning on switching to travel nursing which appears to be more of a "gig" space.
He did consider that a career change, I think in the same sort of way that a computer programmer like (presumably) most of us would consider quitting Google to work on an indie app or videogame development would be a career change.
The larger point is, medical professionals are bailing from the hospital system, which looks pretty busted.
I can add another data point. One of my mother's friends works as a travel nurse. I don't envy her lifestyle, but she seems to find that the compensation makes it worth her time.
The other responder said the same thing, but to add, a traveling nurse I’m friends with , in Texas, gets paid 5k a week if he chooses to work and chooses where he wants to work. So again, this is like making a judgment about software development working conditions by using people rest and vesting at FAANG as an example.
The travel nurse market is growing due to supply and demand problems.
The demand for nurses is increasing as people are leaving and there are more from the boomer generation hitting an age where they need more care.
The supply has stayed the same. Schools local to me have not increased output for various reasons (lack of instructors, lack of space in local hospitals where nurses train, etc). The supply is too low.
So, we have a supply and demand problem. Travel nurses get paid a lot more because of this.
The solution is to produce more nurses. Something few are talking about.
One of the local schools, to me, turned away half of applicants because the program isn't increasing capacity.
No, the solution is to pay nurses better. There are already tons of high quality nurses who don’t want to do it anymore because of poor pay in the face of demanding hospitals and patients.
Poor pay? Judging by the nurses I have talked too in big proper hospitals stress and scheduling are their main concerns, not pay.
Obviously higher pay would increase their abuse tolerance, but I think it is only part of the problem and a short term solution since no amount of pay will offset stress problems.
County level nurses seem to have much better work conditions than hospital nurses.
But, before COVID there was already a supply problem. The supply problem has been slowly getting worse for years and then COVID accelerated it. If every nurse came back to working as a nurse who wanted to work there would still be a supply problem.
Supply has not been growing to meet the demand growth for years.
I suppose you could just pay people more money to make it worth it but the long hours take a toll in other ways as well and contribute to burnout no matter how much you get paid.
