Yes can confirm this is real. I know both German and Dutch nurses who say that the workload is incredibly high. One older nurse also said the pressure today is much higher than years ago.
If I could change one thing about healthcare, it would be how we handle end of life care. Sadly, hospitals are full of 80-90+ year old people who cannot walk or talk for years, advanced dementia plus many other serious comorbidities, with severe malnutrition and recurrent aspiration pneumonia, with large non-healing sacral ulcers, who shit and piss themselves, and the family continues to insist we "do everything" to help this person. It is by far the most demoralizing part of working in healthcare, in my opinion, and an astronomical amount of expenditure and effort goes into torturing these people - at the direct order of the family - only to prolong suffering a few more months.
Until you have to make that decision it’s easy to judge. Even if you think you are doing the right thing for someone that can’t speak for themselves, the guilt can stick with you.
Try to avoid a grizzly end of life. Go to the gym, and if/when you get some form of cancer or some other degenerative disease, think about how ending things well is important.
Every time I've been in the hospital
- unfortunately too many times -it's the nurses I see and who do the work,
with the occasional lab tech visiting to do a test or draw blood.
The doctors show up once a day,
doing their rounds.
Don't get me wrong,
I've had some wonderful doctors,
hospital patient visits are only part of the work doctors do.
I remember the good nurses,
the patient nurses who understood why I'd be grouchy,
even angry at times,
and would sit down and talk to me.
I remember the young new nurses,
sometimes struggling with an IV placement but persevering to get the skill they know they need.
Most importantly I remember how every time I'd wake from general anesthesia,
the first face I saw was a nurse letting me know where I was and what's happening.
Yes but there are more nurses than doctors (2.5:1 oecd average, and it's probably higher in hospitals). The doctors are also working long hours and are under pressure. I've been in hospital more times than I'd like too. I remember one time a doctor in a non-english speaking country helped me in ER and then took me downstairs and bought me a sandwich and talked to me for a little while after a panic attack.
"Nurses should be at the very top of our social hierarchy but we live in a world where it’s just the opposite," she says. "This film is a love letter to the profession."
I moved furniture for 3 years in the early 2000s to support my shareware business. Something like 500 moves, sometimes 9+ hours per day, occasionally 6 days per week. It made me who I am today, but also broke me in countless ways.
I witnessed single mothers giving us $20 tips each (around $40 today) while wealthy people didn't even offer us water. I saw the best and worst of the human condition, sexist pay policies, how workers are exploited by not being provided a schedule for the next few days so they have to call in each morning, how truck fuel costs more than workers' pay, how Right to Work states allow businesses to throw employees away on a whim, how tax brackets at the bottom create the impression that any additional pay gets skimmed by the man, among a great many other injustices, and how all of those conspire to keep the working class down so that a handful of individuals can become fabulously wealthy.
With every improvement in tech, I see the gulf widening. We can talk about how poor people now have cell phones and flatscreen TVs, while conveniently ignoring how people with a net worth over $10 million who couldn't spend that money in a lifetime are now buying politicians to shred the social safety net, among other dubious endeavors.
I say with complete confidence that the arrival of AGI will bring about ultimate wealth inequality. I foresee a world where 10 billion people work performatively to survive long after robots can do the work better, while less than 1 million people live like gods, free even of senescence. Assuming that we stay on this timeline and don't shift to a more equitable one.
I went into computers in the late 1980s to eventually build an android like Data. I didn't know that Turing test-passing AI would arrive 20 years early, or that I would spend the first quarter of the 21st century hustling to make rent due to unfortunate geopolitical realities driven by unmitigated greed and regulatory capture.
Now I'm not so sure that I even want to stay in tech anymore. It has been anything but kind to me. Every time I level up, so does the world, and expectations upon me just grow for the same pay. My people-pleasing has cost me my health on a number of fronts. I know that someday, I'll have to choose computers or my life.
After all of that, one might think that I'm all doom and gloom. But I'm not. I've come to treasure my time at the warehouse as a teaching tool after a great deal of shadow work. I admire my foreman for being the provider that I can only hope to be someday. I look in awe upon the borderline homeless vets, deadbeat dads and ex-cons who showed me what it is to give without expectation of reward. I see them in all of us, even the people I disagree with, and that gives me hope that maybe we can come together and avoid the iceberg that's about to sink this ship.
I'm reminded of this scene from Jaws which always stuck with me:
I see a world divided into two camps: one that does much for little, and one that does little for much.
It makes me wonder where we all sit in relation to this. What kind of impact we could have on the future, and how that might help everyone to self-actualize.
I don't pretend to have the answers. Some of my best years happened when things were at their worst, and vice versa.
But I do know that everything is upside-down right now, and always has been, since the dawn of civilization. I feel that tech won't really be tech until...
It's a great illustration of how people are valued. As for those wealthy people not even giving you water: they were making a whole pile of assumptions there because (1) in their world nobody ever would appreciate being given water, they've had their own supply since the day they were born and it never runs out and (2) they weren't tipping you because they didn't have to and that's how they got to be wealthy in the first place: by taking advantage where ever they could.
small aside: /. had this 'friend' feature and I really liked it (I would have liked a blocking filter for drivel even better), you are one of my favorite commenters on HN and have been for a long time, you spend enormous time arguing your points and I find myself appreciating the arguments and sometimes being swayed by them so thank you for all that hard work.
Nurses in Spain make 2500-3000 euro a month, in a country where the most common salary is 1250 euro. Are they overworked? Well then they can take a pay cut so we can hire more of them.
Eurostat average full time salary 2022 for Spain is €31k. 2021 average nurse salary €38k.
While mean is not median the stats seem to show much less of a difference than your figures. For comparison in the US median full time wage is $66k while median nurses wages is $86k.
Nursing is a skilled occupation requiring a bachelors degree. Seems good they get paid around average wages for graduates.
I just watched the trailer... and yeah... that fits with what I've seen tangentially through my wife's career, and the stories she brought home.
In the ER, you at least have a doctor on staff. I can't imagine what it's like to be an understaffed floor nurse. Given the oncoming Tsunami of hospital closures and funding cuts, it's going to get much, much worse here in the US.
Situation probably will get much worse since Europe decided to enter an endless arms race.... Dark days for Europe, very sad progression. Regarding healthcare workers, at my country, Greece, double-shifts without intermediate break has become the new normal in the last 10-15 years. I think Europe has the most awful leadership ever.
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23 comments
[ 0.29 ms ] story [ 75.9 ms ] threadWhat even is the solution? Expand the already massive healthcare sector further? Where does the money for that come from?
The doctors show up once a day, doing their rounds. Don't get me wrong, I've had some wonderful doctors, hospital patient visits are only part of the work doctors do.
I remember the good nurses, the patient nurses who understood why I'd be grouchy, even angry at times, and would sit down and talk to me. I remember the young new nurses, sometimes struggling with an IV placement but persevering to get the skill they know they need.
Most importantly I remember how every time I'd wake from general anesthesia, the first face I saw was a nurse letting me know where I was and what's happening.
I moved furniture for 3 years in the early 2000s to support my shareware business. Something like 500 moves, sometimes 9+ hours per day, occasionally 6 days per week. It made me who I am today, but also broke me in countless ways.
I witnessed single mothers giving us $20 tips each (around $40 today) while wealthy people didn't even offer us water. I saw the best and worst of the human condition, sexist pay policies, how workers are exploited by not being provided a schedule for the next few days so they have to call in each morning, how truck fuel costs more than workers' pay, how Right to Work states allow businesses to throw employees away on a whim, how tax brackets at the bottom create the impression that any additional pay gets skimmed by the man, among a great many other injustices, and how all of those conspire to keep the working class down so that a handful of individuals can become fabulously wealthy.
With every improvement in tech, I see the gulf widening. We can talk about how poor people now have cell phones and flatscreen TVs, while conveniently ignoring how people with a net worth over $10 million who couldn't spend that money in a lifetime are now buying politicians to shred the social safety net, among other dubious endeavors.
I say with complete confidence that the arrival of AGI will bring about ultimate wealth inequality. I foresee a world where 10 billion people work performatively to survive long after robots can do the work better, while less than 1 million people live like gods, free even of senescence. Assuming that we stay on this timeline and don't shift to a more equitable one.
I went into computers in the late 1980s to eventually build an android like Data. I didn't know that Turing test-passing AI would arrive 20 years early, or that I would spend the first quarter of the 21st century hustling to make rent due to unfortunate geopolitical realities driven by unmitigated greed and regulatory capture.
Now I'm not so sure that I even want to stay in tech anymore. It has been anything but kind to me. Every time I level up, so does the world, and expectations upon me just grow for the same pay. My people-pleasing has cost me my health on a number of fronts. I know that someday, I'll have to choose computers or my life.
After all of that, one might think that I'm all doom and gloom. But I'm not. I've come to treasure my time at the warehouse as a teaching tool after a great deal of shadow work. I admire my foreman for being the provider that I can only hope to be someday. I look in awe upon the borderline homeless vets, deadbeat dads and ex-cons who showed me what it is to give without expectation of reward. I see them in all of us, even the people I disagree with, and that gives me hope that maybe we can come together and avoid the iceberg that's about to sink this ship.
I'm reminded of this scene from Jaws which always stuck with me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xQQIqAiTYA
And I just watched Mountainhead, here's the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27cN2_k0JF0
I see a world divided into two camps: one that does much for little, and one that does little for much.
It makes me wonder where we all sit in relation to this. What kind of impact we could have on the future, and how that might help everyone to self-actualize.
I don't pretend to have the answers. Some of my best years happened when things were at their worst, and vice versa.
But I do know that everything is upside-down right now, and always has been, since the dawn of civilization. I feel that tech won't really be tech until...
I just wanted to say, I really admire this succinct and well written point. And agree with your post in general.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/1jofu7d/ac...
It's a great illustration of how people are valued. As for those wealthy people not even giving you water: they were making a whole pile of assumptions there because (1) in their world nobody ever would appreciate being given water, they've had their own supply since the day they were born and it never runs out and (2) they weren't tipping you because they didn't have to and that's how they got to be wealthy in the first place: by taking advantage where ever they could.
small aside: /. had this 'friend' feature and I really liked it (I would have liked a blocking filter for drivel even better), you are one of my favorite commenters on HN and have been for a long time, you spend enormous time arguing your points and I find myself appreciating the arguments and sometimes being swayed by them so thank you for all that hard work.
While mean is not median the stats seem to show much less of a difference than your figures. For comparison in the US median full time wage is $66k while median nurses wages is $86k.
Nursing is a skilled occupation requiring a bachelors degree. Seems good they get paid around average wages for graduates.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/nama_10_fte__...
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/12/14/nurses-salaries-acr...
In the ER, you at least have a doctor on staff. I can't imagine what it's like to be an understaffed floor nurse. Given the oncoming Tsunami of hospital closures and funding cuts, it's going to get much, much worse here in the US.