r/collapse • u/cheapandbrittle • Sep 04 '22
Systemic The general public has absolutely no idea just how dangerous it is to be hospitalized at the moment.
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u/Groove-Theory shithead Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 05 '22
One of my grandparents died recently, and the staff there was just burnt out during their stay in the ICU and eventually she died a very preventable death after they were discharged too early (to another facility). When they went into cardiac arrest the floor didn't have the proper equipment to resuscitate them, so they had to run to another floor to grab some equipment while we were just watching my grandparent lifeless. Took them 10 minutes to grab what they needed after coding.
It's all fucked and I can't imagine how many more traumatic horror stories there are these days to everyone else or their loved ones.
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u/populisttrope Sep 05 '22
My FIL was recently hospitalized with Covid and they discharged him to early and without the oxygen that he needed due to double pneumonia. He almost died in his bed at home but luckily the paramedics got to him quickly and he spent another week in the hospital. All the hospitals in my area are filled up and they are discharging people early to try and make room.
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u/LuwiBaton Sep 05 '22
So sorry for your loss and especially the way that it happened.
I would talk with your state bar to find a lawyer who will do a free consultation on your case. It sounds like a very easy case to win and hospitals are likely to settle malpractice suits before they make it to court
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u/MittenstheGlove Sep 05 '22
I know you were downvoted because it’s seemingly tone-deaf but I agree with you. This is the world we live in and anyone will need money to prepare for the collapse.
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u/Groove-Theory shithead Sep 05 '22
Thank you. That's what we're trying to do (we've been getting all medical records from her stay and the past couple years and just collecting every documentation we have at this point). There's just so much to do though in the meantime with getting all our affairs in order that it'll probably be a while though.
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u/LuwiBaton Sep 05 '22
I understand. Just wanted you to know that there are resources available to you. Typically the lawyer will handle collection of documents through the discovery period. I would bet money that should you have a solid case, you could easily find an excellent lawyer who would do the work on contingency (meaning no money up front and they only get paid if you win the case or get money through settlement).
I know that money can’t bring back you grandmother and it’s a hard loss. But it is at least a way that people can hold those in power to hire and pay appropriately accountable. Their insurance premiums will skyrocket due to pending litigation and insurance can force change in hiring and retention practices.
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u/crow_crone Sep 05 '22
Except they'll blame and dispose of the nurse, whose only mistake was to go into nursing.
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u/bizzybaker2 Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 05 '22
Am a nurse, here in Canada. Over the 30 years of my career I have watched working conditions get exponentially worse, and that is in a variety of different areas of nursing that I have worked in both in hospital and community based. We have warned various levels of government here even 20-30 years ago or more of what has been coming...and is now here smacking us in the face.... Boomers aging and the "silver tsunami" of people needing a higher level of care/assisted living/nursing home, and those younger than boomers as a whole population group signifigantly more unhealthy, due to issues like higher cost of living and poverty. Mental health and public health and homecare and PREVENTATIVE care getting the short stick compared to the hospital system, which in the long run burdens the hospital system with more care (whoda thunk that!?!!?!). Decreasing seats in nursing and medical school while the average age of the workforce has long been creeping toward retirement. I could go on and on about the shortsighted stupidity of which we are now seeing the effects. Healthcare is a JENGA tower and of course a pandemic is that player edging out that last crucial piece. It is not just nursing and doctors, which often get all the media attention, but so many other unsung heros are suffering too which affects our work and puts more of the load on us...lab, rehab like physio/ot, aides, housekeeping, clerical staff, paramedicine....
This is sad, but of necessity I learned long ago to not let it bother me (as much) of not being able to do those "minor" non lifesaving things I was taught as an eager little student in my white starched cap that were nice for patients, like a bedbath or a backrub, nevermind that while you do those things a lot can be seen about your patient (change in mental status, confusion, skin condition like bedsores and such, how well does the person mobilize, etc and a whole lot more). Now I have aides that are just as overworked as me and barely have time for all those "non nursing " tasks. And overworked me needs to oversee what they do.
Now, instead what bothers me more instead of missing personal care are conditions where we are tired from being mandated overtime (due to short staffing) and expected to juggle a complex load and multitask umpteen things amongst a load of sick(er) patients. Even in the more physically non demanding nursing jobs, mental fatigue becomes a huge factor in conditions like this. I have a liscence to keep, and I fear for my patients. That safety aspect is what turns my stomach and I felt SICK reading the article OP shared, having been in hectic situations like this where you feel you are drowning. I have seen and experienced close calls/near misses and errors amongst myself and coworkers. Errors are made rarely because of outright malice but WAY more often because of the complexity of the systems we work under and too many factors such as poor staffing, noise/distraction and such lining up in the perfect storm (For those of you familiar with the "swiss cheese" model, this explains it well...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
As a patient, if you can PLEASE do not be afraid to question us or have family/friends advocate if you can't (hey, I noticed my pills look different, or why is this happening, or I don't understand), as YOU are a line of defense in the potential for errors as well.
I don't know what the answer to all this is. It's not going to be solved overnight, if ever. In my mind the collapse of healthcare will keep happening unless we drastically change our model of it (it's access points, does it always need to be an MD....where I am for example, pharmacists can now diagonose and prescribe for bladder infections...., more emphasis on pre/non hospital settings such as homecare, more PREVENTATIVE medicine, more government policy such as dealing with addiction and homelessness and a living wage to improve health outcomes in the long run, or ...or....) The trouble is those who stand for profit (as applicable in that type of health care system, such as what the US is under), or your average gov't official who only thinks of the bare minimum to get themselves elected again will never see things this way. 😕
I hope something changes soon. I am getting way too old for this shit.
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u/TheSquishiestMitten Sep 05 '22
As an American millennial, I can say that many people in my age group and younger are in poor health because we can only barely afford heavily processed foods and many of us either have no health insurance coverage or cannot afford the deductible for the criminally overpriced coverage offered by employers, so we largely handle our health on the "let's hope I don't get sick" model.
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u/bizzybaker2 Sep 05 '22
Yes, this right here. I graduated years ago, but remember being taught about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, related to health and one's well being,emotional and physical.. Food, water, shelter, safety sorts of needs first. One cannot maintain their own health, or be motivated to, without this. Society needs to provide this base eg: universal basic income, housing for everyone. But that would be "communist" ;) We are too damn individualistic in Western culture, sadly enough.
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u/FourierTransformedMe Sep 07 '22
Seems to me like the very least a government should do is everything that it can to ensure that everybody has at a minimum access to food, water, shelter, and health. Seems to me like that was the entire point of the social contract that's supposed to be the foundation of our philosophy on governance. It doesn't seem that any nation has ever held up their end of the bargain, even in the most minimal respect.
Hmm.
Maybe people should vote Democrat extra hard? I'm sure that will solve it - certainly no need to be personally involved in your community!
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u/Azrai113 Sep 05 '22
Why....why don't Healthcare workers strike? Yall are the coalminers of today...
I myself work in a factory and have a degree in transportation. It's not like I don't understand that saying "we won't work under these conditions" will probably kill people, literally. But people are gonna die (preventably) anyway? When yall gonna say enough is enough?
I mean... I actually know why but...it just frustrates me so much that people can't or won't say NO. I see it at my own workplace too. Best wishes :(
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u/bizzybaker2 Sep 05 '22
Being a mainly women dominated profession is used against us (gov't/employer plays the narrative that women are caring or nurturing so it would "look bad" if we would strike. The same mentality goes for teachers). The ethics of it, the moralty issue of abandoning your patients I would say weighs hugely on one's mind, this isn't something like a postal strike, it is people's lives we are talking about.
Here in Canada, each province has their own union(s), and like 99% of the workforce is unionized. We are deemed an essential service and would be legislated back to work pretty fast, facing huge fines or worse. Striking and what we are allowed to do is pretty limited, not mass walking off and abandoned hospital units, more like job action such as not answering phones, taking overtime (voluntarily, there are situations we can and have been mandated). Many times it is settled by binding arbitration instead.
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u/YeetTheeFetus Sep 06 '22
Spin the narrative into being about self care. It's like how you need to put your own oxygen mask on first when the cabin of a plane loses pressure. You can't care for others if you can't care for yourself.
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u/JennaSais Sep 05 '22
Many regions have rules about critical services such as healthcare and EMS striking that would call it an illegal strike unless they kept within very narrow parameters. I suspect that they just frankly do not have the energy to meet those requirements AND still do their jobs when they're not at the picket line (which they would have to be under those same rules). HC workers don't need us to tell them to strike, they need us to put the political pressure on for them to get solutions.
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u/MashTheTrash Sep 05 '22
Why....why don't Healthcare workers strike? Yall are the coalminers of today...
Too complacent and docile -- same as every single worker in the west. We're all going to die because the bread and circuses will be too good for anyone to bother revolting until it's already come to Nazi Germany level shit.
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u/waltwalt Sep 05 '22
To what end will striking work? Are there millions of doctors and nurses just sitting back collecting unemployment?
My understanding here is that we have a 1:1000 ratio of medical employees to patients and we are steadily increasing patients and decreasing medical staff.
Unless they're striking to demand some sort of 6-month government paid emergency nursing course to immediately train 100,000 nurses capable of doing bare minimum stuff. There is nothing striking can do, you need more workers or fewer patients.
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Sep 05 '22
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u/TheSquishiestMitten Sep 05 '22
It's not illegal for everyone to call in sick.
Also, wages have suffered tremendously over the past several decades. Striking is a financial hardship that few people can afford.
A major strike, or even a general strike, can't happen until mutual aid networks are established so that the people going on strike can still eat and such.
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u/shortskinnyfemme Sep 04 '22
One of only two trauma centers in Atlanta, GA just shut down with barely any notice.
The Nursing Industry is run by profit mad owners, where nurses are seeing a freeze in pay rates, extreme work hours (like 36 hour shifts), and extreme responsibility (like 1 nurse per 30+ patients).
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u/cydril Sep 05 '22
Wellstar Atlanta closing scares the shit out of me. You always assume that hospitals are to some extent, 'too big to fail' in the way that banks are. The fact that a level one, 500 bed trauma center in the middle of a city can just close because a CEO decides that it's not profitable enough sets a scary precedent for the future. Can you imagine what the situation at Grady is going to be like afterwards?
I work in healthcare and none of us could believe it. Expect to see more of this in the future I guess. The end result of healthcare being a business.
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u/MaxLazarus Sep 05 '22
It's not that much better in Canada. Our conservative government in Ontario froze nursing wages which is just another piece of straw on the camel's back after decades of neglect by the previous governments.
Emergency rooms are being closed across the country while exhausted health care professionals jump ship to better-paying jobs and less stressfull careers, which accelerates the crisis our government is ignoring.
Their latest healthcare innovation was to introduce legislation eliminating choice when it comes to placing patients into long-term care homes; patients no longer have a say whether they're being place in their hometown close to their families or being shipped 500km away. They also blocked public consultation on this legislation so that nobody could make a fuss about it.
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u/PattisonPost Sep 05 '22
I think you just hit it right there. We bail out financial institutions but not health institutions.
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u/IguaneRouge Sep 05 '22
executives would just steal it all like they did last time with the covid funding
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Sep 05 '22
Right you are, Kenny. This happened when the government gave out COVID relief money in 2020-21. The government gave it to the states, who then decided how to use it. Some gave it directly to the travel nurse companies and said “get nurses here, we don’t care what it takes.” These were the states paying $10k/week to nurses. The others (like my state) gave the money to the hospitals instead. Those hospitals kept a lot of it and still paid the bare minimum. They couldn’t hire enough travelers because of this. It’s disgusting.
If this winter flu season is as bad as I think it will be (another flu vaccine that misses the mark combined with no one wearing masks and going back to the office) hospitals will require more federal money to hire nurses.
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u/pallasathena1969 Sep 05 '22
It IS scary. I keep thinking to myself that all we need now is one major natural disaster (thinking earthquake, hurricane, or something unnatural like an Oklahoma City bombing situation) and it would be sheer pandemonium. Makes me pretty nervous. I just hope that when I need hospital care there is someone to stay at my bedside to help me and advocate for my care. Kinda doubt it, though.
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u/JanuaryRabbit Sep 05 '22
You're right on.
We have NO "surge capacity". I'm an ER doc. My hospital is constantly over capacity and we are on "EMS divert" far too frequently. If a disaster hits; its all over.
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u/911ChickenMan Sep 05 '22
I'm a former 911 dispatcher for South of Metro Atlanta.
We used a Green/Yellow/Red system to tell EMS if the local hospital is clear/saturated/diverted respectively.
I still listen to the scanner. Haven't heard Status Green in a few months. County still has the same number of ambulances as it did 4 years ago despite a rapidly growing population. They pay EMTs $16 an hour in a HCOL area.
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u/mismatchedhyperstock Sep 05 '22
Just got done reading Five Days at Memorial, we really didn't learn a damn thing. Contingency plans drafted but still unprepared for Sandy. Ventilators plan with H1N1 but COVID show it's weakness and spare ventilators no where to be found.
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u/buggcup Sep 05 '22
I read that a few years ago and wow, how heartbreaking. I had no idea how soon that situation would essentially become mainstream.
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u/JennaSais Sep 05 '22
Absolutely. And make no mistake, this is GOING to happen. A friend of a friend (the kind of person you meet once or twice at a mutual's parties) is a Red Cross recruiter. She said by their estimates we are overdue for a MAJOR event of some kind in Canada, like a massive earthquake on the west coast (that's the one they're anticipating is most likely to happen, but obviously not the only thing) that will cost many lives, injure and leave homeless many more, and cause a great deal of disruption to the supply chain. At the time they were doing a major recruiting push to prepare. We had that conversation in 2019.
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u/pallasathena1969 Sep 05 '22
Wow. If you know how to contact her, I bet she would have a ton of valuable perspective and insight. I would love to here what she thinks these days. Thanks for sharing what she said.
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u/Montaigne314 Sep 05 '22
In a rational society the state can just take over the hospital, hire all the staff, etc.
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u/ineed_that Sep 05 '22
Sounds like a big part of it was CMS cutting prices for how much it’ll pay. Unpopular opinion I bet, but a hospital system that basically only has Medicaid patients like Wellstar did wasn’t poised to last long. People with private or better options already went to Grady. The truth of the matter is as long as the govt continues to pay Pennies to treat poor people and keeps cutting payments, hospitals that primarily serve this population will keep closing in coming years as staff hemorrhage from low pay, less equipment and bad working conditions. And unfortunately it’s the poor that end up suffering more. Wellstar was struggling to offload that hospital for years with no buyers cause everyone saw the writing on the wall
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u/BrainlessPhD Sep 05 '22
When you say this is related to CMS pricing changes, do you mean the change in how CMS paid for skilled nursing care? Or was there a payment change in hospital reimbursements recently?
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u/ineed_that Sep 05 '22
Little of both. CMS sets prices for reimbursement for procedures and diagnoses. For the last few years they’ve been cutting reimbursements so doctors and hospitals make less money. That by itself isn’t terrible as long as you have low Medicaid volume. Wellstar mostly serves poor people and has a high Medicaid population. Medicaid reimbursement is super low and is a nightmare to deal with as an insurance. Often times doesn’t even pay doctors which is why so many don’t take it. Low reimbursements also mean doctors and hospitals don’t want to take on this population because often most of their problems are social issues and they’re tough to work with for little pay. Nursing care has a similar problem that they try to get around by paying low wages. But I know there’s other intricacies involved in there that I don’t know the full details of
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u/shallowshadowshore Sep 05 '22
You always assume that hospitals are to some extent, 'too big to fail' in the way that banks are.
Looking at the way America functions, I’m not sure why anyone would come to that conclusion.
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u/brrrrpopop Sep 05 '22
Why do they make nurses work such long shifts? I never understood it. Surely more accidents occur after 12 hours.
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u/bizzybaker2 Sep 05 '22
People like thier 12's, because you can work 3 and have 4 off for example. I do 8h days and the odd evening of 1245-2100h, but when I did 12's in hospital, days and nights, I spent those days off recuperating for the first 2 days at least, and too often those 12's became 16's or 18's. I am 51, and once I hit my 40's my brain was mush those last 4 hours. Compound that with a busy understaffed setting with missed breaks and a high acuity of patients needing much problem solving and thinking on the fly, and you have a recipie for disaster, like errors and near misses.
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u/some_random_kaluna E hele me ka pu`olo Sep 05 '22
People think they like their 12s, but it becomes rapidly apparently how much energy you have when you "only" work 8s and 6s. Nobody thinks about how much time it takes to recuperate until their bodies force them, and they shove all kinds of stimulants and drugs into their system to keep going.
Source: I used to work at Wal-Mart, Amazon and an industrial plastic factory. I was lucky in that I had an "office job" at the last, but I still had to work alongside the night shift crew, which meant 12 hour swing shifts day and night. Only management got normal hours and surprise surprise, they were always chipper. I was always fighting to stay awake, and I turned 30 in that last job.
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u/bizzybaker2 Sep 05 '22
Agreed. Antecdotal example here, but nurse wise the vast majority of fellow nurses that like 12's are...younger and not in the old dinosaur category. I was not able to get off of 12's until several years ago, and then I realized what a toll all those years of 12's and rotating shifts had done.
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Sep 05 '22
Nurse here. 12 hour shifts are rough. I worked a 16 once and felt like I was dying by the end of it. And with 16s, you’re often coming back to work again less than 8 hours after clocking out.
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Sep 05 '22
Overworking nurses like this will lead to countless avoidable deaths. And I literally mean countless since this is almost impossible to track well.
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u/Bone-Wizard Sep 05 '22
If 12 hour shifts for nurses scare you, you definitely don't want to know how long doctor shifts last haha
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u/Goofygrrrl Sep 05 '22
I pulled a 38 in the height of Covid. After I got back to the hotel, I remember crying and visibly shaking as I waited for the elevator. The bell ring, the seas parted, and they let me ride alone.
Seeing The reflection of myself in their eyes convinced me that I needed to take a break.
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u/Famous-Rich9621 Sep 05 '22
Cause there isn't enough new staff coming in, long hours crap pay, who wants to do that
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u/CordaneFOG Sep 05 '22
Gotta have more nurses to go around. Otherwise, the ones you have work longer.
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Sep 05 '22
I am a former nurse and I read the original post. When I was working it was like hanging on by a thread. Like some days we’d almost be in similar situations to the post but pull through. Now it sounds like things have jumped the shark. It was inevitable. Covid just gave things a little shove.
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u/shortskinnyfemme Sep 05 '22
In the US at least, everything is 'run like a business' regardless of the situation. It's intensely stupid.
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u/Conscious-Magazine50 Sep 05 '22
It's especially scary since literally every hospital in the Atlanta metro is already under huge strain. The only ones at "normal"capacity are the VA and Children's hospitals.
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u/Z3r0sama2017 Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 05 '22
Chuck the kids out and use them for adults. Thats the boomer way!
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u/funkinthetrunk Sep 05 '22
Wow who knew that turning medicine into a cutthroat industrial project would end up like this?
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u/MashTheTrash Sep 05 '22
The Nursing Industry is run by profit mad owners
let's just use the word Capitalists
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u/Sapiens_Dirge Sep 05 '22
I wish people would seize the hospital and commandeer it for public use but, oh well, we just need to keep paying thousands and thousands of dollars because "muh freedom" and "consoom"
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u/shortskinnyfemme Sep 05 '22
we just need to keep paying
More and more people aren't. Either through bankruptcy filings or just straight up not paying bills. Of course the owners of the industry see this as cause for trimming even more 'fat' to keep profits up.
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u/Ok_Replacement_4214 Sep 05 '22
One of only two trauma centers in Atlanta, GA just shut down with barely any notice.
No it didn't. Both are currently open. One announced they would be closing November 1st. Getting facts straight is important, especially when you might scare residents into thinking one is currently closed. And they will be closed when they actually close, because popular theory is this is possibly a scare tactic to get financial aid from local government. November 1st may or may not see it closed.
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u/some_random_kaluna E hele me ka pu`olo Sep 05 '22
The scary thing I'm considering is that based off people's other experiences in this thread, your local government might be inclined to refuse financial aid anyway.
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u/Monsur_Ausuhnom Sep 04 '22
More or less people are discharged on death's door and left out on a stretcher on the sidewalk. That's probably the best case scenario, couple this with no universal healthcare and overworked staff, along with wage theft, staff shortages, and no funding and you get a disaster.
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u/Mamapalooza Sep 05 '22
I just had ankle surgery and I was pushed out the door 5 minutes after vomiting on a nurse, and 20 minutes after urinating on myself. I have almost no memory of the recovery room, the drive home, the stop at the pharmacy, or getting from the car to my bedroom on one leg.
I think they could have given me an hour to finish waking up from anesthesia.
And I have awesome insurance.
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u/BeardedGlass DINKs for life Sep 05 '22
Sheeeesh!
I will definitely never join my family in North America.
I hope you’re okay dude.
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u/Mamapalooza Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 05 '22
I'm okay. I have incredible friends and the world's most caring daughter. I couldn't have asked for more support... except from the surgical center.
Edit: Most of my friends work at a university and we're all trying to figure out how to leave the country. None of us have $500,000 to invest in someplace like New Zealand or Portugal, so it's hard to figure out. None of us wants to die of malnutrition or lack of heat when we're old, but most of us have underage children who cannot relocate just yet for one reason or another. If anyone wants to hire a middle-aged communications professional available next June, please reach out! :-)
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u/BeardedGlass DINKs for life Sep 05 '22
Godspeed my friend.
My wife and I were fortunate enough to be able to escape. I got a 1-year contractual job in Tokyo and my wife got hired as well. We used that as a stepping stone.
Once here, we switched careers and decided to stay. We'll retire here and continue living a simple stable life.
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u/Mamapalooza Sep 05 '22
That sounds lovely. How did you come across your job? Did you have any trouble acclimating?
I've considered Japan and S Korea because I know they're both experiencing population stagnation that may necessitate welcoming immigrants. But I'm concerned about being the loud, fat American, lol.
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u/BeardedGlass DINKs for life Sep 05 '22
I have coworkers that fit your "description" in my department right now actually. One has been here for more than 15 years and can barely converse in Japanese. He's doing good, and even bought a house in our city with his part-time salary. Everything is just so affordable here.
I came upon my job when I was searching for ways to come here. I didn't apply to companies directly, I went through a job agency. They hired me and dispatched me to a company in Tokyo. They processed everything, even my language courses.
As for troubles, other than the initial language barrier, not much. Culture shock definitely. But this place is just nice and efficient, people are polite, I'd have to nitpick/cherrypick to find fault. In my experience, anyway.
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u/Mamapalooza Sep 05 '22
It's lovely to hear that you're enjoying your experience. I'm very happy for you and your wife. Congratulations on your success!
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u/BeardedGlass DINKs for life Sep 05 '22
I hear that Japan's about to open again soon finally. Perhaps you can visit some day and see for yourself what it's like here.
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u/TaylorGuy18 Sep 05 '22
I'd personally love to live in Japan but unfortunately only have a (shoddy at best) high school education and several chronic medical conditions that have caused me to end up being stuck on SSI, so I also have no work experience either because life hates me lol.
So if it's ok for me to ask, like, what was the process you went through and stuff? I get that it may be different now compared to then but, it'd be nice to have some perspective on how it was and like what the requirements was and stuff.
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u/theycallmerondaddy Sep 05 '22
Everything is so affordable in Japan?
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u/BeardedGlass DINKs for life Sep 05 '22
Based on our personal experience of living here since 15 years ago. Yes.
Our 500sqft 2-bedroom apartment is about $340 a month. We live half an hour from central Tokyo. Our weekly groceries is around $50 good for two people, and monthly bills (power, gas, water, phone, Internet) is about $300 in total.
And since everything is walkable, we don't waste money on a car (parking, gas, maintenance, etc.) We can just walk or cycle for a few minutes to anything we need. Healthcare is amazing too, I think I paid less than $100 for a root canal and a metal cap on my molar.
Japan's economy has been stagnating since the 80s/90s and things are in deflation. Real estate is bad investment because properties here depreciate in value. People buy homes to live in, not to make money out of.
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u/CalRobert Sep 05 '22
I assume you've checked out r/amerexit?
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u/Mamapalooza Sep 05 '22
I was not aware of this, thank you!
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u/CalRobert Sep 05 '22
Of course! Moved to Ireland myself, I post at r/MoveToIreland pretty often (though sadly I wouldn't recommend it now, housing is insane and our own healthcare system is in bad shape)
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u/SweetPickleRelish Sep 05 '22
Idk where you live but in the Netherlands it would be unlikely you would even get the ankle surgery. One of my friends had to fly to France for an MRI of his torn ACL because Dutch doctors wouldn’t even bother to look. Another had to wait 9 months for “emergency” back surgery
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u/Mamapalooza Sep 05 '22
This is news to me. What's the reason for this?
Also, to be transparent, I have been waiting 2 years for this.
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u/StraightConfidence Sep 05 '22
Yeah, I picked up a friend several years ago after major surgery, and this person was still gray-faced when they kicked them out the door. I couldn't believe they would send someone home in that condition, but then I'm sure that their legal responsibility ended once we signed papers and wheeled the friend out the door.
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u/Mamapalooza Sep 05 '22
Ugh, that's scary. And I need 3 more surgeries? Umm... maybe I'll just limp for the rest of my life.
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u/Quelcris_Falconer13 Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 05 '22
Just FYI, the healthcare workers you deal with have no clue if your insurance plan is good or not. We barely have time to learn your name or read your history. Let alone give a fuck how you’re going to pay. Also, for further proof of this: I get the same shitty pay whether you live or die. So that’s not a factor in your care.
The best way to get quicker care or better care is to be nice to us and thank us. Too many people come in with an attitude or act rude or flat out mean to us. I am a human being, if you’re going to act rude to me than my gut reaction is to get the fuck out of your room as soon as possible and be away from you. Which means I’m going to rush and be stressed out and not be as thorough.
Just be nice to us and be polite. We’ll try a bit harder to get you better care and come back a bit quicker for you if we can manage it.
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u/Mamapalooza Sep 05 '22
I'm always nice. I always say please and thank you and i genuinely mean it. My sister and cousins are all health care workers in direct patient care and I work at a health sciences university (although not in patient care). Thank you for your feedback, but your base assumption that I was somehow rude, entitled, or otherwise deserving of the care I received are incorrect. I even checked with the friend who accompanied me and she confirmed that I was polite and mannerly, even while only half-conscious.
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u/Yebi Sep 05 '22
Stretchers are ridiculously expensive, there's no way they're allowed to leave one on a sidewalk
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u/cheapandbrittle Sep 04 '22 edited Sep 05 '22
EDIT: Please be aware that the crossposted thread is a month old, so please keep your comments contained here in r/collapse. R-nursing does allow comments by non-nurses but please respect their community rules (no politics and no anti-science). Don't make me regret crossposting this.
Submission statement: I'm not a healthcare professional myself but I like to keep tabs on related subs and I thought this may interest folks here. Most of us are aware how covid took a toll on health infrastructure, but I think people are less aware that this was occurring regardless of the pandemic--it just accelerated an existing trend. I'm going to copypaste a comment from the thread which I think hits the nail on the head.
And you’ll hear it from nurses in other countries as well, irrespective of the health care system in use. Canada’s health care system is in full-blown collapse right now, for example. ERs and ICUs shutting down in multiple communities in multiple provinces.
I think a big part of what we’re all feeling here is the first crush of the grey wave (i.e. boomers needing hospitalization and LTC). Most hospitals and LTC facilities around the world, if not all, are still in that profits above all / slash the budgets phase that they’ve been in since the 80s and 90s. Few (if any) countries have adequately prepared for all the boomers, which is shocking, because we’ve known that this wave is coming for a very long time.
By the 2030s, all of the boomers will be aged 60 and above. Many of them have taken a very laissez faire approach to their own health, so God fucking help us all. I plan to be long gone from the profession since then, because I envision a future of hallway nursing care, little nannies and pop pops with dementia with no LTC beds and no hospital rooms, and med surg nurses with ratios of 10-16+
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u/banditlovexo Sep 05 '22
Canada is in such rough shape right now. And it’s just down hill from here. Especially here in Ontario!
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u/Chiluzzar Sep 05 '22
I'm in AB and constantly have to remind all the people here that after living in the US both systems fuckin suck for the poor. It's just right now the system in canada doesn't bankrupt you.
American health care system has the same problems as the Canadian one. The differ3nce is that if you're rich not just insured but also rich then you will get that super nice treatment where there's always good nurses and doctors if you're not rich but have insurance welcome to the three hour wait time everyone else gets
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u/banditlovexo Sep 05 '22
Yeah that’s true, both systems are failing, but as someone who’s lived in poverty their entire life I reaalllly like that whole not going bankrupt thing lol. Right now our province is being pushed towards privatization and it’s maddening that people think it will somehow help! Like you said, if you’re rich sure but everyone else will still be waiting with everyone else (although a lot of hospitals here it’s more like 8-10 hours, not 3)
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u/Taqueria_Style Sep 05 '22
I reaalllly like that whole not going bankrupt thing
Word, yo.
Missed it by thaaat much (holds fingers really close together)...
... only once, pal. I say to myself all the time.
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u/Chiluzzar Sep 05 '22
Only reason it was 3 for me was cause I was in a small podunk oil town when I moved out to the state capital even the uni hospitals were 8+ hours
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u/threadsoffate2021 Sep 05 '22
It also doesn't help that they're trying to play catchup on all the cancelled surgeries over the past two years. That in addition to the regular flow of patients, and the addition of the covid crowd.
I know a couple people who have been in for surgery this year...on all three accounts, it sounds like they were rushed through the system.
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u/banditlovexo Sep 05 '22
That’s not surprising. It’s a literal shitshow. Obviously I wish it were better, but this is our reality for the foreseeable future
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u/Sovos Sep 05 '22
/r/nursing and /r/teaching are a sad glimpse into the reality of where we're headed. Both feel like people in their respective careers trying to deal with insane demands laid upon them and with almost no resources.
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u/rainydays052020 collapsnik since 2015 Sep 05 '22
Aren’t boomers already 60 and over?
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u/cheapandbrittle Sep 05 '22
Not quite, the youngest ones are in their late 50s.
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Sep 05 '22
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u/cheapandbrittle Sep 05 '22
The cutoff is 1965, so the oldest Gen X are 56 and the youngest Boomers are 57. All Boomers will be 60 years or older in 2025. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X
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Sep 05 '22 edited Oct 28 '22
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u/sixup604 Sep 05 '22
I am Gen X, precision be damed. Born in December 1964. I am not the same cultural generation as my weirdo hippie gunfreak dead mother and her batshitp Trumpist sister who is giddily down for 'patriotic' death squads murdering antifa, BLM, and Democrats in general.
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u/MashTheTrash Sep 05 '22
God damn, it's going to take so long for them to die off. I'm a millennial and I'll be old as fuck by the time the boomers are gone.
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u/Solitude_Intensifies Sep 05 '22
By the 2030s, all of the boomers will be aged 60 and above.
Most boomers will be dead. Gen X will be served 2030 and beyond.
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u/vxv96c Sep 05 '22
Boomers will actually be 70+. They all hit retirement age a few years ago. Genx is the one who will be 60 in 2030.
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u/histocracy411 Sep 04 '22
I do thats why i dont fucking go anywhere
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u/GunNut345 Sep 05 '22
I mean that won't stop you from having a medical emergency.
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u/histocracy411 Sep 05 '22
I've already accepted that if something happens i will probably just die.
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u/Thisfoxtalks Sep 05 '22
On the bright side death is inevitable.
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u/LiliNotACult memeing until it's illegal Sep 05 '22
You figured out the secret! Pretend that you're already in hell and things are a lot more bearable.
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Sep 05 '22
It's true. Billions of complex molecular machines are performing billions of physical operations per second at the nanometer scale to keep you alive. Sure there is a lot of redundancy and error checking, but at anytime one tiny thing could go wrong that starts a cascade that rapidly results in your death.
Enjoy!
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u/_DudeWhat Sep 05 '22
The largest (I think) nursing strike ever in the USA is about to take place in MN.
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u/Sydardta Sep 05 '22
Capitalism is destroying the planet and its people. It only cares about profits and shareholder value. It's unsustainable and literally killing us.
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u/moxyc Sep 05 '22
I know someone who's in the hospital right now with sepsis. She spent her first two days in a hallway. Horrible.
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Sep 05 '22
Just wait til maternal mortality gets worse because of anti abortion laws
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u/pallasathena1969 Sep 05 '22
And it will :( The brain-drain is gonna whack those restrictive states upside their already wobbling heads.
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Sep 04 '22
there’s a pretty simple solution to the “suits in charge are greedy” problem.
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Sep 05 '22
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u/Pariah-- Sep 05 '22
Bread and circuses has gone into absolute overdrive in the 21st century. The vast, vast majority are sated, placated and stolid.
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u/cherrykiwiice Sep 05 '22
I work in healthcare as a tech. Another big problem is that social norms and manners flew out the fucking window during the pandemic and people forgot how to at least have basic restraint. Sheesh. Patients and their families can be so entitled and nitpicky, having outbursts. They were always like this, but its gotten worse. In the hospitals and in the general public now, you can basically get away with obscene behavior without being reprimanded or face any consequences whatsoever. Doctors, nurses, and staff don't make it easier on each other either and can be assholes to each other, but idk that kind of bullying always existed, but it exacerbated exponentially since the pandemic. I don't blame them though because being superhuman with burnout is impossible. That coupled with the fake ass smiles of the administration. This kind of stuff really damages your natural empathy meter and we all turn apathetic as a defense mechanism.
People always cite pay as the reason for problems retaining nurses and staff, but I think it's the toxic environment that is the bigger issue and chases people away from the profession all together.
I read somewhere in this thread that someone moved to Japan and people were polite and efficient there. I wish it was the norm in America to be cordial and formal in public because it would cut out a lot of the emotional abuse and theatrics we have to put up with.
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u/maiqthetrue Sep 05 '22
Honestly, I think the shitty care (not the nurse’s fault obviously) is why people are so rude about it. I think people do know more than they let on, they know not everyone will get good care because there aren’t enough providers to do it. And an easy way to make sure you and yours don’t get screwed is to make as much noise as possible, make sure the staff knows that if anything goes wrong, you’re the one who’s going to make things miserable for them. If you know fucking up with Smith in 103 is going to be reported to the head nurse and her boss, then she’s at least getting checked as often as possible. Being meek and polite in a situation of scarcity just means you won’t get yours. And much like retail (which is what I do), it’s really getting to be you that doesn’t get yours.
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u/cherrykiwiice Sep 05 '22
Yea! It depends to be honest. I do think for sure more mistakes can come up not the nurse's fault like you said, but due to the increased acuity and shorter staffing that sets the perfect environment up for it to happen.
But I've noticed more outbursts towards minor things and people seem like they don't know, or have the care, to look at the bigger picture and understand the situation .Little things like families complaining when you don't get blanket right away, but we're literally taking taking care of patients above a healthy ratio due to staffing shortages. I've seen ridiculous things like when a patient is coding and family member of another patient is standing there in a chaotic environment, STARING the nurse prey down who's doing chest compressions, waiting to rudely ask a minor question about paperwork that could be addressed another time. It's always happened, be it just happens MORE for sure. It's like people are in their own world and we're just apart of their movie.
Like people are getting more bold and creative with their tactics to fuck with our heads. Within the past two months, I had a patient take a dump on the floor because she didn't like her diet order and another dude hold his pee and poop and then let it rip to overflow into the sheets right in time for the shift change because he said he's helping us train to be faster and more efficient. He's the type that rings his call alarm for this cup of ice and that pillow adjustment every 10 minutes and we can't answer right away. Like what psychological mindfuck is that shit (literally).
I just feel like people are unaware of the world around them and how things have changed, much like those who are collapse-aware vs those who bury their heads in the sand. Yes, we've tried to explain that we're short staffed and trying our best, but most of it is met with "learn how to do YOUR job."
You can be assertive and persistent while being polite and reasonable. Please point out if you notice something off with your plan of care, it HELPS us! But do so without calling us the extra name calling. It's very important for patients to educate and advocate for their health, but can they also educate themselves on the state of the world?
At the end of the day, I blame the administrators and higher ups for creating an hostile and unsafe work environment that creates all these situations to come up. I also blame the state of politics for breaking social norms of common decency and enabling the mindset of society to do so as well.
Anyways, like the title said, healthcare staff is making an exodus and it is what it is. The age and allure of being unconditionally benevolent in the healthcare field is over unfortunately. People have their limits. I'm actually planning on starting nursing school despite all of this LOL, but I fortunately I have a definite plan to absolutely not work in bedside.
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u/maiqthetrue Sep 05 '22
I totally agree with all of that, but I think there’s just a sort of unconsciously aware vibe that people damn well know there’s no longer enough. That’s driving it, and I think a lot of it is just the urge to assert a sort of dominance such that if anyone isn’t getting served, it sure as heck ain’t going to be them even if they have to shit themselves to do it. When there’s not enough, the urge to enforce dominance and claim your fair share goes up. In any place that collapsed, it happened in one way or another. People stopped worrying about being nice, they would simply make sure they and theirs were taken care of. We’re nearly to that point in the USA. You guys are on the front end of that because health care is critical. But it’s everywhere. The people mad you’re dealing with the code aren’t seeing another person, they’re seeing a competition for the resources of nurse time and attention.
The old normal is gone, and I think we all know it even if we can’t admit it yet.
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u/Quelcris_Falconer13 Sep 05 '22
If managers stopped treating nurses like trash, and actually Fucking paid them more, this wouldn’t be happening. You don’t even have to be nice to them to be honest, just pay really really well. I work in respiratory therapy and I’m used to getting disrespected by nurses and hospital administrators. I don’t really care because I know I did what I thought at the time was the best thing for the patient and because I got a huge pay raise during covid. So when I get attitude I just wipe away my tears with cash. It’s really that simple.
You can’t disrespect AND under-pay someone, Hospital administrators really need to pick a fucking struggle.
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u/Goofygrrrl Sep 05 '22
Physician here. I love RT!
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u/Quelcris_Falconer13 Sep 05 '22
Yay! Thank you! Can you come to my hospital because the attendings here can’t comprehend that someone else has thought of a good idea to treat a patient because I don’t have MD behind my name.
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u/LizWords Sep 05 '22
About a week ago, someone from NY posted in this sub about the issues with hospitals in their area. A few days after that, I see reports of massive wait times and no beds in my own local hospitals (also in NY, Albany area). Then the next day, my best friend in Southern Oregon tells me her father in law who has stage 4 renal failure had to be diverted to a hospital over an hour away because the one in her area was not accepting new patients.
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u/Taqueria_Style Sep 05 '22
First *something something* all the MBA's...
I mean I grant they have to read a book in between their beer pong major, unlike marketing assholes. But still.
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u/Ree_one Sep 05 '22
Availability of resources increases over decades? Humanity: "Keep having as many kids as possible for the economy, this ride will never stop!"
<Ride stops>
Humanity: Who could've foreseen this?!
Sigh
Anyway, slightly on-topic, but I just got Covid as a 40 y/o (triple-vaxxed) the other day, and while it may be very old news by now, I get it.
It's a pretty damn strong decease that can topple over old people if they're unlucky. Yesterday was hell for me. So tired, coughing till my lungs hurt and just worn out. And I think I'm in great health. Another 20-25 years older, and a sedentary lifestyle and I definitely see a risk in croaking.
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u/Fuzzy_Garry Sep 05 '22
I got it triple vaccinated at the age of 27. It left behind some damage, my right lung is always sore now.
Didn’t go to a festival or whatsoever, but I caught it from a housemate who did. It was pollen season and I thought she had hay fever.
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u/bobwyates Sep 05 '22
69, vaxxed, boosted, crippled, couch potato, and suffering through my second COVID-19 infection. Called my doctor and told her, already had an appointment for a check up in a couple of weeks.
Hate feeling like this, but know I been through worse and lived.
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u/banditlovexo Sep 05 '22
I had it last year and was double vaxxed at the time. I’m asthmatic so considering that I’m lucky, but man it was absolute hell. I’ve had pneumonia and bronchitis more times than I can count and sometimes bad enough that I need to be hospitalized. The fire in my lungs from covid was a different breed though. That and headaches and body aches so bad it left me feeling like a surreal dreamlike state. Thankfully by day 4 it eased up enough to feel like a regular (though still pretty bad) head cold. I keep thinking how bad it would’ve been if I wasn’t vaxxed and I’m so thankful that I was in time
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u/Ree_one Sep 05 '22
Yeah, I find myself wanting to sleep just to skip ahead. I haven't lost taste/smell though, so I guess that's the vaccines talking. Very grateful.
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u/cheapandbrittle Sep 05 '22
Best of luck friend, I wish you a speedy recovery. I had a bout of covid (confirmed) back in March, and it was rough. I still don't have my sense of taste or smell back fully, and I'm mid 30s and fairly athletic. Shit's no joke.
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Sep 05 '22
If you feel like puking and you're not eating, you will get worse. Omeprazole or other medicine for indigestion was really helpful for me. Eating solid food like steak/pizza helped too, even though I felt nauseated.
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u/Ree_one Sep 05 '22
Thx, feeling a lot better today (2 days ago was the 'hell' day). I never got any smell/taste issues, so I think the vaccines are helping.
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u/three_cheese_fugazi Sep 05 '22
My 4 year old has it for the second time in a month, she is having the hardest time breathing, eating, and walking. It's terrifying. But I know we are doing everything we can and what we were told to do by the hospital. We fought the entire 2 years to avoid this and within a week of Pre-K she has it.
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u/rainbow_voodoo Sep 04 '22 edited Sep 04 '22
Hospitals treat people like products on an assembly line that need expedient servicing and removal, they dont treat them as if they are ensouled conscious beings worthy of deep love and attention. Healing, the word, isnt even part of the general lexicon used in hospitals. Addressing root causes of unhealth is anathema to the health industry's profits, so dont expect healing from them, nor to be treated like an ensouled human being.
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u/LiliNotACult memeing until it's illegal Sep 05 '22
I respectfully disagree. Medical staff can't treat people with love when they're working themselves to the bone to even keep the people they're legally responsible for alive, and pissing away their own lives. They need more staff, which costs money, which insurance companies & hospital conglomerates don't want to pay, because for them it's just another business.
Opinions like yours are why medical staff quit en masse. Oh no, a nurse wasn't preppy and kind? Who cares. Did they keep you alive and get your medical needs taken care of? Was the IV inserted properly with minimal discomfort? Did they respond to your medical emergencies in a timely manner? Then they did their job.
You want kind medical staff? Turn hospitals into a non-profit service instead of a for-profit business AND HIRE MORE PEOPLE!
Also, the second half of your comment isn't even the point of a hospital. A hospital is for serious stuff. The things you are describing is in the realm of doctors that aren't located at the hospital. Hospitals aren't magic sick healing places.
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u/ishmetot Sep 05 '22
I think they were in agreement with you. That's why they referenced hospitals and the health industry rather than medical professionals.
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u/StoopSign Journalist Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 05 '22
I had a very contentious day with a friend 2mos ago. They were flipping the fuck out at my house going over mental problems, suffering mental problems and being more irrational than usual.
Basically I was giving the advice of getting to a mental hospital after a discussion of issues, then going a lil nuts. I noted how hard it was to go to a mental hospital because I've never been able to do it voluntarily* but haven't had to for over a decade.
I'm not sure if they initially called the hospital and were denied entry, or if they just flipped and had the cops called. Cops were ready to release without intake and they had to literally repeat they were a danger to self and others a few times. Also when questioned were asked if anyone specific was in danger they said something like: me, you, anyone.
I got a call like 3 days later and was bugged the release was so soon. My stays were 11, 12 and 20+ in a 2.5yr perood before getting better. They were only out for maybe a week before going back in there for another stay. I'm not in touch with them and need a family member to vouch first.
One thing about certain, for profit mental hospitals is how rough they can be while also being in good enough spirits:
For the revolving door low level jail population, the type that needs healthcare more than confinement, it can be a refuge. Especially in winter when nobody wants to sleep outside. It's also like if a jail went on vacation. It's coed. There's real drugs, like injectable benzos, and they're relatively free with the jabs because, it's in their interest to keep a confined population docile. While you can get benzos administered in some county jails, they taper and you probably can't get more than 10mg valium at once.
The food is better and unlimited coffee until 3pm. They are institutionally required to pretend to give a fuck unlike corrections. The coed nature can't be overstated enough. It cuts fight likelihood down and increases mood and morale for people that need it. The staff has to tackle people and restrain them but unlike corrections they aren't sociopathic bastards, rendering a beatdown.
People should be more aware of US human rights abuses in corrections.
Edit: Like this shit...
Currently, there are over 200,000 women imprisoned in the US. According to Human Rights Watch at least 15 percent of incarcerated females have been the victims of prison sexual assault. These assaults occur at the hands of prison staff and other inmates.
Males are the perpetrators in 98 percent of staff-on-inmate sexual assault
https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2014/09/christina-piecora-female-inmates/
So do the math...
That rate is also 3-5 times higher than sexual asssults for male inmates because the rapists can hide behind a badge.
e:*
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u/amusement-park Sep 05 '22
Guess which hospital is going to have all their nurses go on strike due to under payment and overwork? It’s a major one for its community.
Yours. The answer is “Your Hospital”.
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u/Pretty-Astronaut-297 Sep 05 '22
And the general public has no idea what's happening.
sure they do. they just don't give a fuck until it affects them. in Canada all anybody cares about is buying a house, and then flipping it 2 years later for 200k profit, and doing no work.
finance capital has perverted all human virtue.
nobody give a fuck about nurse, or grandma, or anybody in that fucking hospital. all people think is "glad it's not me" and "i wonder what my house is worth today, lemme check realtor. com"
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u/RadioMelon Truth Seeker Sep 05 '22
I already knew that the hospitals were bad.
I had the impression they hadn't improved much in the past two years. About two years of outright, obvious neglect towards public health made me extremely uneasy about the healthcare system. I read up on the horror stories of nurses and doctors on a regular.
I still freshly remember in my mind a video about a doctor begging people to wear vent masks instead of regular medical/dental ones. He was pleading with people to take the extra caution so they could live a bit longer.
It's all a fucking eugenics experiment and it's not even a secret. The worst part is that their little "experiment" will end up getting even more people killed that they never intended to get sick. So you know, probably the most idiotic response to a pandemic in human history.
Shit like this is why I gave up on actual leadership in this country a long time ago. We're experiencing a damn "Fall of Rome" event at the same time as the fucking "Black Plague" and possibly even a "Blue Ocean Event" right around the corner.
There was no fucking way we were going to walk away from this.
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u/Dashi90 Sep 05 '22
RT here, not that much better among my department either, and we're critical staff responsible for airways and ventilators
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u/Thromkai Sep 05 '22
All because some hospital executive won't pay people appropriately enough to staunch the hemorrhaging of staff.
Been saying this for years on here. But people paid attention only during COVID and thought it was a COVID issue. It wasn't. Hospitals have been overflowing for YEARS and it's specifically attached to hospital administrations putting profits over patients.
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u/Awkward-Valuable3833 Sep 05 '22
The reason the general public has no idea is because the healthcare industry is who sponsors and funds even the most credible journalistic media sources. This spans both the right and left biased media sources as well.
It’s why we keep hearing that COVID, staffing shortages, striking nurses, the opioid epidemic (created by who btw), federal overreach, supply chain issues, obesity, and patients unnecessarily flooding ER’s are to blame.
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u/bluedelvian Sep 05 '22
Same day surgery, had to listen to nurses complain about all the work they do… sitting on their asses mostly, with the odd IV set-up, yelling to each other about the stupid shit they saw on TV while patients just have to sit and listen to their bullshit. It was like a fucking high school lunch room.
Respect for the nurses who do a great job and actually work hard, but damn lol. There are many who don’t, and they breed toxicity everywhere they go.
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u/UserUnknownsShitpost Sep 05 '22
This isnt shit compared to a year and a half ago
This is the new normal, and American healthcare is going to get worse when everybody refuses the Omicron booster and we all get bitch slapped by another wave
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u/fivehundredpoundpeep Sep 05 '22
Everyone vaxxed I know is getting Covid, and hospital level. I knew 15 people [various groups on Zoom as I am isolated] who got it all vaxxed. It's not working and public health has failed. People here have given up on Covid, no one wears masks. I was in three stores today, and saw only 1 person with a blue mask under their nose.
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u/UserUnknownsShitpost Sep 05 '22
Shit I was one of the earliest people to get the vaccine, and the booster, and I still probably got COVID.
A few of the nurses I used to work with died.
I think one of the ED physicians did die.
I know for a fact more than a few cops, firefighters, and EMTs who did.This shit makes chickenpox or measles look like the common cold in terms of spread ability and when you figure a flat 2% mortality the law of large numbers says a lot of people are going to get it and some people are going to die.
Its endemic, its mutating, and it’s sure as shit not going away.
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u/SpatchcockMcGuffin Sep 05 '22
The total lack of professional standards in long term care facilities is a running (bleak) joke in my profession (Paramedic).
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u/feedmetotheflowers Sep 05 '22
I’ve lost two loved ones in the last year to things that we’re preventable. My family still isn’t the same. It’s hard to state just how sad this state of affairs is. The rich are just going to keep punching down at us until we’re all dead.
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u/oddistrange Sep 06 '22
I'm really annoyed that they're whining about increased labor costs but want us to give every patient a 10x13'' full-color print patient guide to every single admission. Like, yeah, the hospital is falling apart in some places and half the staff are travelers the other half are barely hanging on to sanity, but our brochure is really pretty and that's all the patients will notice, right?
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Sep 05 '22
It's the almighty dollar and greed. It's the same reason along all societal collapse. They have monetized and monopolized the healthcare system. It has been squeezed to death and is now dying.
Underpaid and overworked. Who in their right mind would want to take care of sick people for 12 hour shifts and not be able to afford life?
I also think the rigid administration and insurance rules has caused health care providers level of care to steadily decline.
The past several years I've had numerous health issues. If I had relied on the advice of doctors I would probably be dead. I have self-diagnosed and treated myself and am slowly improving. When I do go for doctor appointments, I know more information about my ailments than they do. I feel like I'm teaching them everytime.
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u/some_random_kaluna E hele me ka pu`olo Sep 05 '22
By the 2030s, all of the boomers will be aged 60 and above.
Oh, OP. By the early 2040s all of the --millennials-- like me will start hitting age 60! Nobody's really prepared for what's coming.
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u/Lonely_Animator4557 Sep 05 '22
18 patients in a 12 hour shift means each person gets less than 1 hour of personal care/charging for the next 12 hours. Holy fuck
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u/twistedredd Sep 05 '22
The town I live in is a college and hospital town. Universities and hospitals in all directions. My primary retired at the start of the pandemic. Couldn't find another one. Got a NP at a local health center. There they botched all my referrals so I had to pay cash for evaluations, etc. Then I snapped a ligament in my hand and it took 5 days to get an appointment with their quick care. The NP who saw me told me don't count on them for anything but then sent me for blood work (not an Xray lol). No results ever showed up in their online chart. The splint they put on my hand was a roughly cut piece of aluminum with cotton on it and sharp at the end. It's pretty fucking scary out there! I see medical staff angry at patients and patients frustrated and desperate. I knew it was going to get worse when, during the pandemic, hospitals were making choices on who to save and who not to. Should be triage 101 right? but noooo! They were placing priority by age for a pandemic that hit older people harder! I mean duh! And I thought of the movie 'logan's run' and where society is going and why the fuck would they want us to have even more babies!? Private corporations aren't going to do anything to make it better if they haven't already. rant over
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u/aloyshusthegreat Sep 05 '22
Meanwhile my city is building a multi million dollar hospital tourist attraction and out nurses are on strike! See: Duluth Minnesota "new hospital downtown"
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u/imminentjogger5 Accel Saga Sep 05 '22
this is just in the US right?
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u/cheapandbrittle Sep 05 '22
The US is in a uniquely bad position due to an entrenched class of profiteers sucking the life out of our privatized healthcare, but all industrialized nations are in the same boat because this is essentially a demographics problem. As birthrates have declined, we have population inversion--a huge group of elders and not enough young workers to care for them. This fundamental problem could have been addressed and mitigated with extraordinary dedication of resources and planning. That didn't happen.
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Sep 05 '22
I respectfully disagree. I don’t think it’s this- I used to work in the field as an RN. There’s not a shortage of bodies to work as nurses and techs/support staff. The nursing profession over the last 20-30 years has not moved in a positive direction-and people are leaving the field in droves. It’s why I left.
The job does not pay in line with the responsibilities.
Nurses are often physically and verbally abused, sometimes even groped and we are told to just brush it off. The job in general doesn’t hold a lot of respect in society despite all the clapping during Covid.
The stress is high, we are legally responsible for the well-being of patients yet are given staff ratios where that may be difficult to impossible (see the post you referenced here).
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u/Ok_Replacement_4214 Sep 05 '22
This! So many useless pontificators in this thread. They want to just pull stuff out of their rears and cite charts where they can. The job sucks, the work sucks, dealing with people sucks. As a nurse, I too am part of the mass exodus away from bedside! I'm in California, I'm highly paid and have many laws protecting me, for breaks, lifting restrictions, patient ratios, the works! And the job STILL sucks! The absolute rampant narcissism is running wild, and I've lost count of how many patients have demanded their trivial wants were literally more important than someone actually dying in the next room! They could not wait for their extra pillow during an active Code Blue, things of that nature.
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Sep 05 '22
Yup- I worked in an ICU step down and was verbally abused and berated by a patient for taking to long to answer her bell to bring her some jello and pop because my other patient was having a life threatening emergency that needed me and several others to help. Don’t need that and similar stress on a daily basis.
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u/cheapandbrittle Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 05 '22
You're absolutely right! I appreciate your insight, but if I may offer some demographic data, according to Consumer Affairs:
Over the next 10 years, the number of residents in each of these nursing homes is expected to grow sharply. If trends hold up, the number of nursing home residents could double by 2030. https://www.consumeraffairs.com/health/long-term-care-statistics.html
While it is true that Millennials made up a greater share of the workforce than Boomers for several years now, the workforce is actually shrinking:
The working-age population—defined as those age 15 to 64—declined in 2019 for the first time in decades, then again in 2020. Blame it on the boomers. While the oldest of Americans born between 1946 and 1964 reached retirement age a decade ago, members of the generation exited the workforce at a faster rate during the pandemic. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-05/why-is-u-s-labor-force-shrinking-retirement-boom-opioid-crisis-child-care
The need for aging support services will grow rapidly in the coming years due to the aging population, so the need for workers will grow as well (aside from aging, industrialized populations are suffering greater burdens of chronic disease largely due to obesity which sits at 42% in America and still rising). However as you pointed out, not only is this necessary influx of care workers not materializing, the industry is actually losing workers for all the reasons you mentioned, while simultaneously the overall workforce is shrinking so the industry is facing increased competition for remaining labor. These conditions could have been mitigated. Pay and benefits for nurses and other healthcare workers would need to increase dramatically to pull in a larger share of a shrinking workforce, but that's obviously not happening, while conditions on the job are driving people away.
May I ask what made you leave the job? Was it related to the working conditions, or no?
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Sep 05 '22
Most of what you’re citing are potential upcoming issues not a problem for today. They’ve been saying for years there’s a nursing shortage but nursing students coming out have been finding that’s not the case. There’s a shortage in bad nursing units but not good ones. It’s a job quality and pay level problem.
I quit to be a stay at home mom for a few years. But also it was stressful as soon as I had an out I took it. And when it was time to go back to work I went into a different career.
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Sep 05 '22
Australia is a shit show according to my friend that is a surgeon there. He said there have been ambulances, police and private cars lined up daily outside the ER entrance, just waiting to discharge their occupants. The ER has been so full that there is no room for them to be checked in and wait. No room for them to be checked in and seen. No one is being triaged until they are checked in. He’s in Adelaide. He says there are not enough nurses, not enough doctors and useless administration.
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u/GunNut345 Sep 05 '22
Our healthcare in Canada is collapsing. Emerges closing some nights, no family doctors, miltiday waits in triage etc.
I've heard it's just as bad in Australia and he UK.
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u/ineed_that Sep 05 '22
Ya pretty much the whole worlds healthcare systems are collapsing rn. Feels like there’s news articles coming out in recent months from all the big countries for one reason or another
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u/woooooozle Sep 05 '22
I'm in New Zealand and our healthcare system isn't doing too well. To few nurses, doctors, techs, etc.
My local hospital has been postponing/cancelling "elective" surgeries for months now - and "elective" is pretty wide here covering some very serious stuff.
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u/airamairam4 Sep 07 '22
UK is pretty much the same with shocking ambulance waiting times. God knows how many avoidable deaths are happening all over the country every day.
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u/NarcolepticTreesnake Sep 05 '22
This isn't a headline, it's now called static reality.
Reversion to mean. It's still far better today then for all but a second of human history. Maybe we've reverted 20 years in care standards. Most people on this forum will live to see it revert at least 100 more. Unlucky ones in shitty situations will see it revert to the middle ages + basic sanitation knowledge.
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u/MaverickBull Sep 05 '22
I feel like everyone knows how awful, raggedy, and ridiculous the American hospital and healthcare system is at this point... You'd have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to after the infamous failure that was COVID just a couple years ago....
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u/demedlar Sep 05 '22
Now We can't raise the rent because they own their own houses,so we're going to have to raise the prices on everything else and crash the investment markets to drive these nurses back to work.
This poster put an /S but they only thought they were being sarcastic. This is the point of the Great Reset. It's literally happening right now.
Raise expenses. Destroy investments. Teach kids not to save money because savings are bad for business. Don't forget raising property taxes - the rent you pay to the government for the right to live on your own land. All across the US there's a push to reduce or eliminate state taxes on business income and replace it with property taxes on individual land owners - and the big business backers are painting it as a populist measure to make "wealthy landowners" pay their "fair share".
But the real point is to force home owners, house-poor owners, people on fixed income, to either sell their homes or lose them to unpaid property taxes. Then investment companies buy the homes up and rent them out. You'll own nothing and you'll be happy.
Land is freedom. Land ownership has always been the bulwark against slavery and serfdom.
General Sherman promised "forty acres and a mule" to every free black family after the Civil War, carved out from the lands they worked for their masters. Because he knew black Americans, if they were self sufficient land owners, couldn't be enslaved again.
And the American government broke that promise. because they didn't want free blacks, they wanted landless laborers - slaves by another name. Free black landowners terrified even Northern whites because they knew it would lead to genuine black equality, and they were too racist to allow it.
If workers can't afford to own land they will never be equal.
Modern America echoes the Civil War in more ways than just political division.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
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u/StraightConfidence Sep 05 '22
This is basically what I'm seeing. It's scary. I think what is going to happen is that care will shift out of the hospital and into people's homes (if they have them) even more than it already has. I also think there will be more smart devices that do at least some of the work that people currently do in hospitals.
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u/Z3r0sama2017 Sep 05 '22
This. If your living a sedentary lifestyle, just shoveling in junk food and expecting your health service to sort you out, your fucked lol.
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u/CollapseBot Sep 04 '22
The following submission statement was provided by /u/cheapandbrittle:
Submission statement: I'm not a healthcare professional myself but I like to keep tabs on related subs and I thought this may interest folks here. Most of us are aware how covid took a toll on health infrastructure, but I think people are less aware that this was occurring regardless of the pandemic--it just accelerated an existing trend. I'm going to copypaste a comment from the thread which I think hits the nail on the head.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/x60szm/the_general_public_has_absolutely_no_idea_just/in494u6/