COLLINS: Time for the government to really try to fix the healthcare system
DO YOU WANT TO KNOW why health care is suffering? Because none of the so-called experts know what the hell they’re doing. And workers throughout the system are getting tired and fed up.
The government tries to solve the problem by throwing more money into creating spaces in various programs like nursing schools. But that is not the answer — or at least only a small part of the answer.
What nurses want is to be able to care for their patients properly. They are fed up with crap, of being the only nurse on a floor, of having no care aides on shift to help patients when they are in need of assistance. They are burning out at an astonishing rate. They say to hell with a full-time job and work as casuals so they have more control of their work-life balance. They don’t want to be working a bunch of extra shifts because the hospital doesn’t have enough staff. And so, they back off.
And nurses get shuffled off to other floors when there’s a shortage, and in many cases they don’t have the expertise to do the job. Just like there’s a difference between fighting structure fires and fighting wildfires, there’s a difference between caring for a patient on a psychiatric floor and dealing with a patient on the operating table.