During my nursing career I worked in long term care (nursing homes mostly), and the patient to nurse ratio was appalling. There were days when I was responsible for over forty patients, which is insane. The nursing homes use the excuse that the patients were "medically stable". It's BS because even if they don't have an acute condition, they are mostly elderly with chronic conditions. There is no freaking way the nurses can adequately care for such patients in such large numbers. These places are business first (as in each patient is a cash cow), and good care is a mere afterthought. Most of the facilities I worked in were bought by businesses. They usually did a cosmetic rehab of the facilities so they looked bright and shiny, but patient to staff ratio was still terrible.
government and pharma have progressively moved patient care decisions from actual providers to the bean counters, so yea that's the result. I've taken a cardiac pt to the only level 1 provider in the area and waited in the hallway for 45 minutes while maintaining care. can't imagine how bad the waiting room got.
During my nursing career I worked in long term care (nursing homes mostly), and the patient to nurse ratio was appalling. There were days when I was responsible for over forty patients, which is insane. The nursing homes use the excuse that the patients were "medically stable". It's BS because even if they don't have an acute condition, they are mostly elderly with chronic conditions. There is no freaking way the nurses can adequately care for such patients in such large numbers. These places are business first (as in each patient is a cash cow), and good care is a mere afterthought. Most of the facilities I worked in were bought by businesses. They usually did a cosmetic rehab of the facilities so they looked bright and shiny, but patient to staff ratio was still terrible.
My friends are RNs, and so I know. One works in VA, the other in hospice and another ran her own business.
Of course, the business one is great because she choose her own work. The one in VA is quite stable right now (RIGHT NOW IS THE KEY WORD)
government and pharma have progressively moved patient care decisions from actual providers to the bean counters, so yea that's the result. I've taken a cardiac pt to the only level 1 provider in the area and waited in the hallway for 45 minutes while maintaining care. can't imagine how bad the waiting room got.