My wife is the lead RN in the local ER & also takes shifts on the floor. Without getting political, taking sides, discussing Covid, Government, etc – here is what I can tell you from her first-hand experience:
Their RN’s start at $37.50 an hour with straight double time for any shifts picked up beyond FTE since Covid started. If you do the math, it’s pretty easy to make ~80k+ a year with only a little experience or the ability to pick up a shift or so each week. They’ve got tenured nurses with multiple levels of certification that are making far beyond 100k. The real dagger is that they have had a vacant position posted for 7 months with one applicant who changed their mind.
Their hospital IS at capacity. They’ve been closed to admissions more often than not. They always have Covid patients who are hospitalized on any given day and have had some Covid deaths. If I broke my leg tomorrow, I’d get shipped to a different community to be treated and receive post operative care.
For outsiders who say hospitals aren’t full because some idiot called it a conspiracy, please sign-up to work in one. Covid is partly to blame. However, the bigger issues are staffing and surge capabilities. The economics of hospitals for decades have been that they try to operate at levels where they are not “over-staffed” with minimal surge capabilities. While hospital administrators who can barely take their own temperature are raking in $200k+, lower paying positions have been trimmed or reallocated to maintain the bottom line. For decades nurses in rural settings have made decent money with modest salary grids, but now when the chaos, stress, and heartbreak of the job have compounded…the hospitals are short staffed and cannot shovel enough money their way to stay open. Hopefully when this pandemic or whatever it is now called recedes – the healthcare field learns a valuable lesson. Administrators, Directors, CEOs, etc. of hospital facilities don’t do S*** except cash their checks. These are the positions that need to be squeezed, not the boots on the ground type workers.
My wife walked into the administrator’s office demanding double time on picked up shifts late this Summer for her fellow nurses + a substantial bump in salaries across the grid on top of the 4% they had already been given(all non union)…she gave them an ultimatum knowing they’d never be able to replace her or any of them. She reminded them that a suit and tie hasn’t taken a pay cut, nor have seen people die. Their counter was they would think about it and arrange a meeting with negotiators. Her final offer was to have it implemented within 48 hours or they’d walk effectively closing the hospital indefinitely as she forwarded attachments to dozens of job openings with sign-on bonuses to the entire staff and copied administration. Within 8 hours the raises and mandatory double time were added to their system.
Not a nurse but have worked in a hospital for 10+ years and this is pretty spot on. For the first time in my time I have been able to toss raises at people who wanted to leave. I personally know of 3 ER nurses who left to join travel nursing. They make significantly more money and don’t have to deal with the internal BS of the hospital. I know in my ER we have at least 3 but I believe it’s 4 travel nurses on staff. Doing the same job those other 3 were doing but getting paid about $30 more an hour to do it. Not a bad gig.
As far as capacity. Every week we are on ER divert, usually multiple times. We are often on ICU divert. One thing I can share though. We have a 10 bed ICU unit that is not being used simply because we do not have the staff to be able to cover it.
Currently we have 23 inpatient Covid patients. 18 of them are non vaccinated. Covid patients make up about 20% of our inpatient census and about 50% of our ICU census.
