I cant believe this woman can vote on legislation when he has no idea what we do.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Deleted link. Blog links are not allowed. Story link below
This is what I do.
Don’t tick off the nurses.
I am ashamed someone in my state voted for her!!! Unfreakin’believable.
Probably would have been better to link an article with the context about what controversy Washington state senator Maureen Walsh got into:
https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/article229504874.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/maureen-walsh-nurses-state-senator-slammed-for-saying-nurses-play-cards-all-day/
Her comment was insulting to the many nurses who work to provide quality care to folks in hospitals. Playing cards? Seriously? She had the gall to say that on the record?
Shameful.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Just as a reminder: no political discussion. “Maureen Walsh said ‘XXX’” is fine. “Don’t tick off nurses” is fine. “Maureen Walsh is an example of what’s wrong …” is not.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing on the news the other night. I have a familial connection to a former president of the ANA. Knowing what she went through from her start as a single mother and her years in the profession, dissing nurses is uncalled for.
My mom had several hospitalizations in her last years. We spent all day and all night with her in her rooms as we saw how overworked the staff was and the doctors would show up once a day. Those 12 hours on shift allowed for a continuation of care that was invaluable to mom and to other patients. I never saw anyone watching a movie or doing anything other than patient care or records.
The nurses I know are heavily relied upon by all other providers and family members. They are part of the crucial glue that helps keep the system going and providing care to patients and families.
I’ve been in many medical settings and never seen any nurses or other healthcare provider playing cards or doing anything other than providing care to the huge number of patients they serve.
Nurses know the score: the major problem nurses face is nurse to patient ratio. In other words, nurses are given too many patients to take care of. When you ask for pain medicine for your mom or dad, or whomever, and your perception is that the nurse takes too long to deliver it because she doesn’t care, YOU ARE WRONG. It’s because she has too many patients! All of her patients’ sons and daughters are hitting the call button asking for that pain medicine or the blanket or the glass of water thinking that the nurse cares or doesn’t care based on the time it takes her to respond. WRONG.
The hospital administrator doesn’t care about your mom or dad. They care about their bonus, and to properly staff each unit takes away from their bonus or their bottom line. They are interested in stretching the nurses to their outright maximum capability, and they couldn’t care less if that requires the nurse to not eat, drink, or go to the bathroom even once in their 12 hour shift. It’s a disgrace.
I was wondering why my daughter asked me to send a deck of cards to some woman in WA state. I’ve never seen this D get so worked up about a political issue. Too often she has long shifts with no real break. The solution isn’t to turn them into 8 hour shifts with no break!
The main point of SHB 1555 is to require uninterrupted rest and meal breaks. The 8 hour shift limit was an amendment that was added to the bill.
Right. But the clip I saw of her had her saying basically, “well they want 12 hour shifts, maybe they should have to do 8 hour shifts instead”, as if saying that would shut them up.
@Nrdsb4 another reason it take so much time for pain medicine is the documentation required to give a narcotic pain medication. I’m an NP long out of hospital practice but I suspect the double check with a colleague and additional documentation for controlled substances has only gotten more rigorous.
I gotta admit, the nurse in our family (nephew’s SO) and my med school lad had a blast showing us memes about this during our Easter get-together yesterday!
Well, something has to change, because the care my dad has been getting in the hospital has been really poor. 
@MaineLonghorn yes, something needs to change. I can only speak for MA but between lacking medicare reimbursement and nurse/aide shortages, nearly everyone (except those in private pay/private care situations) are getting subpar care. In 99% of those cases, its not the fault of the caregiver. I know many nurses and CNAs that actually leave the job because they can’t provide the quality care they so desperately want to. My own mother left the field (CNA) more than a decade ago because she was given far too many patients to care for and couldn’t look herself in the mirror at night when she got home. Long gone are the days when you have the time to sit with the elderly and hold their hand in comfort. Now its you have 18 elders to get up, wash up, and have in the dining room within 90 minutes (yes, 5 minutes each). Or 20 patients with a morning med pass before breakfast in 90 minutes. Its ridiculous.
Administrators will claim there is a “nursing shortage.” The only reason there is a shortage (unless we are talking about rural areas)is because they refuse to hire and schedule enough nurses. In California, they have legally mandated nurse to patient ratios. I’ve read many times on my nursing forum that administrators will get around this by not hiring enough CNAs. They refuse to give units a unit secretary, so nurses are now having to do that work (which is significant, so remember this when you are tempted to complain that the nurses ignore your loved one because they are always on the computer). I’ve even read where they expect nurses to clean the beds and rooms when a patient leaves because they won’t hire enough housekeeping staff. It’s just ridiculous. That’s why I finally quit my job at the endoscopy center where I worked for 8 years. They quit hiring nurse aides, so in addition to keeping up with an ungodly pace of patient admissions from the procedure rooms, we had to strip the beds, wash them down, re-make them, and take the beds around the facility back to the pre-op rooms, all while getting major pressure from the nurses in the procedure rooms to HURRY UP and clear the recovery rooms. The pre-op nurses are also getting major pressure from the doctors to HURRY UP and get the patients delivered to the procedure rooms. They refuse to put enough nurses on the schedule to handle the demand. They wouldn’t give us stools to use while documenting at the computers because it was noted that giving nurses the opportunity to sit down during their 8-10 hour shift caused them to take longer to clear the rooms for the next patient. It was absolutely exhausting working at that place. You spent the greater part of the day trying to hold off the inner panic attack. Compared to my OR pay, the salary was insulting.
I want to find the facility that is so slow that the nurses do nothing but play cards all day. Yeah, right.
She was tired. How ironic.
https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/article229504874.html
I’m not buying the “tired” line. Does it apply to everything she said that day?
Tired? Poor thing. She needs to get some rest. Maybe play some cards…
I think she introduced the 8 hour day into the bill out of spite.