It Could Happen Here - The Million Nurse March

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

Our healthcare system doesn't work without traveling nurses. Now they're on the verge of revolt. We sit down with one to discuss why. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking music, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and

influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline Podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and occasionally even about how to put some other things back together. Today we're going to be talking about something that is increasingly a part of what we like to call the crumbles around here, which is the

healthcare system in this country and the hospital system in this country, as it kind of gets crunched by COVID. And we're going to particularly talk about a really critical aspect of our entire medical infrastructure that a lot of people don't know about, traveling nurses. And with me today is our guest, Anne. Anne, you are a traveling nurse from New York to California, all around the country. Thanks for being on the show. Glad to be here. Yeah. So I live in Colorado and I was a regular staff nurse until COVID hit. and I was a regular staff nurse until COVID hit. And, you know, at that time we expected it to crunch everywhere. But my home hospital, like many places that worked on the coast, ended up being really empty when everybody locked down and stopped getting into car accidents and going to parties and all of the other things that bring people into the ER and ICUs. So at that time,

I quit my full-time job and went to New York as a travel nurse. And then I've been bouncing around hotspots since then. So New York, Texas, Ohio, rural New Mexico. I just finished my third contract in California. I've been up to Oregon. So I've seen the healthcare system working and not working in a lot of different places. And also like how much disparity there is in different communities related to COVID and the healthcare that we can provide. Yeah. And I am kind of, before we move on to some of the specific things going on with travel nurses, what is your sense of like, how often are you in a place and feel like, well, this,

the hospital system here, this particular hospital, they're like right on are you in a place and feel like well this the the hospital system here this particular hospital they're they're like right on the edge of a breaking point uh most of the time okay that's good to know wear your seat belts folks yeah i mean particularly since everyone was able to get vaccinated right like? Like to me, I really feel like that, that, that point of like the tipping point of like the quote unquote crumbles kind of like after everybody was, was able to get their second vaccination. Um, and we had so much hope last May and June and things were reopening and it was kind of like, wow, things could go back to normal. Um, and then like, I don't believe that's going to

happen. And since then, I've seen so much more despair in my co workers. And I've heard about so many more healthcare suicides, staff nurses, travel nurses, RTs, other ancillary people. And, you know, the kind of running joke in a lot of workplaces is like, well, I hope I test positive for COVID because that would be better than coming into work another day. Yeah. Or I hope I get hit by a car so I don't have to come in. Your job, I think, is what a lot of people would – the people who are reasonable human beings and see what you're doing is incredibly necessary would find the work to be something of a nightmare. I mean, it sounds horrific to have to deal with this. I mean, it's not an easy job in the best of times being a nurse, but like with COVID and stuff, it's just, there's so much else on

y'all's plates. And one of the things that has happened over the course of the last year, well, almost two years now, is that from January 2020, the advertised pay rates for travel nurses around the country have gone up by about 67%, which in staffing firms have, you know, increased their billing of hospitals by like 28 to 32%. So like this huge raise in what travel nurses are demanding and what is getting paid out. what tribal nurses are demanding and what is getting paid out. And I think a reasonable person would go, well, yeah, of course. And yeah, I think anybody would go, any reasonable person would go, well, yeah, of course, you guys deserve much more money than that for what you're dealing with right now.

I have no problem with this. But people who do have problems with this are the American Hospital Association, among other folks, generally the folks who are seeing this primarily as a, well, now we're spending more money issue, as opposed to a, hey, maybe we don't have enough nurses. Right. So I guess I have maybe a couple of comments on that. So one of the things about travel nurses, so if you're not in the travel field and you say, I want to change hospitals, even if you're an experienced nurse, they will take between a month and six months to go through their hiring process. And then they will give you a week, two weeks, maybe four weeks of orientation.

So that's a long process to hire a nurse normally. For me as a travel nurse, I will talk to a recruiter. I will say yes. I will be on the road somewhere between four hours to 24 hours later. I will get to the hospital. I will do a bunch of paperwork that is for compliance and makes no difference at all. I will get between two and six hours of orientation, which is basically here's the bathroom. Here's the storeroom. This is what we're going to audit in the charts.

And then I'm expected to take care of complex, actively dying patients. So, you know, people complain about how much we're getting paid. But if you only have two hours of like, where's the bathroom? And like, this is how you get in most of the time you're spending with it being like hey i need computer access buddy and then there you are and you're in the thick of it with no backup you know so you already have to be an expert in your field and you have to be able to walk into an unfamiliar chaotic situation and hit the ground running immediately so yes making 120 bucks an hour is a lot of money but i don't know that that's so super unreasonable for two hours of like yeah exit now take care of people who are actively

dying and don't screw it up it's the way we're told the system is supposed to work right like this is how capitalism is supposed to function the demand for something goes up and the demand for nursing is way the hell up so So the price goes up. If you believe in capitalism, like one assumes these people who are responsible for paying you and are currently lobbying. So what's happening, I should go back because we didn't note this, but the American Hospital Association and a number of other folks are lobbying Congress right now to put a cap on the amount of money that traveling nurses can receive. And a number of Congress people have said that they're going to be looking into the issue.

Several states, Oregon, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Kentucky have introduced legislation that's attempting to cap nurse pay rates. So there's like this huge backlash attempting to lock down the amount of money y'all can continue to get paid because of all of the things this country, I guess has money for the people dealing with the, I don't know what, I don't know how many millions of additional sick and dying people are,

are kind of beyond what these folks are willing to shell out for. Have I gotten the size of that and i mean to clarify so in a fema contract so what a lot of the contracts i take are so the nurse is making between 100 and 125 an hour and maybe you also have a tax restipend or you don't kind of depending on how you are are in that. But the bill rate to the hospital is usually like 220, 240. So the legislation is against the agencies because the agencies are making between 40 to 60%. Of course, the agency is then going to say, hey, well, we aren't going to pay you as much because we still want the same cut. My understanding, so the trickle-down effect

is likely going to be travel nurse wages. But my understanding is it's asking the FTC to take enforcement against the travel nurse agencies. Because the agencies, they're the ones that say, they have the person on the phone that says, hey, you have these credentials. We want to send you to this hospital, yes or no. We've got this hotel arranged, or we don't, or those types of, and we're going to do this type of onboarding. So they have their own kind of infrastructure, and they take half, 60% of the cut. And so some of those people are making a lot of money too.

Yeah, and it seems like it's kind of the situation where the way this is being framed, they're trying to crack down on these people who are kind of profiteering or could be argued to be profiteering off the situation rather than trying to cap the amount that the nurses can make, so to speak, or at least not by as much. But the overall effect will be that because of the way these companies work, y'all will still wind up making less money. Correct. Yeah. Within the traveling nurse community, what is kind of where are people right now with this like what is what is kind of the mood um so i think there's a couple of things to note so in the fema contracts they're usually 60 to 72 hour contracts so you're working

back to back to back to back so i'll do hours a week sometimes. And most people are not white women like me. This is mostly first and second generation immigrants and generally people of color. So these are not people that are saving for Lamborghinis. These are people that are paying off their student loans because a lot of them went to private nursing schools because that was kind of what was accessible to them because of all of the disparity in education and opportunities. These are people that are trying to pay off their mortgages. These are people who are paying off their parents' houses. So this kind of idea that like nurses are greedy is I think really unfair

because most of us are just trying to like, you know, make a life that works. And also you can't do 80 hour contracts 52 weeks out of the year. No, I mean, doing it for any extended period of time, I've worked those kind of hours in a generally less stressful working environment. And it like it breaks you down over time. Like you can't do that at any time in your life for one thing like and you can't do that forever. And it sounds like this is kind of a lot of people are taking it as like this is an opportunity. I can get my parents out of debt.

I can I can get a house. I can save for my kids. I can pay off my own college. safe for my kids to, I can pay off my own college. Like it's a chance for a lot of these people by putting in an unbelievable amount of effort to get ahead. And I can't even imagine the frustration at seeing so many people be like, well, no, not so fast. And I mean, one of the things that people are bringing up is right, like, in the same way that, you know know we struggle to want to pass minimum wage laws for the undocumented immigrants that pick our food and you know support this infrastructure

that is totally unseen now that we have we know what is mostly first and second generation immigrants that are working these FEMA contracts right like you're targeting a section of the population that are not the people that have doubled, tripled their wealth in the pandemic, right? Like these are not all of the people that got the small business loans that didn't need them and, you know, and have, are just putting all of that money into stock, right? These are not, these are people that just want a middle class American dream and we're willing to work really, really hard for it.

And I mean, These are people who are asking, can I have the thing we're all promised? If I spend 80 hours a week watching people in a lot of cases, choke out their last fucking breaths, is that okay? And a lot of people are saying, Oh,

of course not. Right. And you know know so we're taking care of dying people while we're getting yelled at at the phone of like is cursing allowed on the show or not absolutely yes of course yeah i mean i had a family member saying you're fucking imprisoning her on a ventilator i'm gonna come for you where do you fucking live you know we have to get security involved um you know we get death threats i've had people like threatened to find where i live and rape me jesus fucking christ and so i mean yeah yeah 67 isn't enough of a race taking care of your dying loved one who also probably would say those

same things to me because i would say hey please, please be vaccinated. And they would say, fuck you. But I'm still going to do everything I can to take care of them. And I'm going to endure this abuse. And like, yeah, if I'm going to leave my home and the safety of a hospital that works and go into these total clusterfucks of hospitals where the educator has left, the manager has left, the director has left. So there's no leadership. It's 80% travelers, some of which are great some of which are also hot messes and trying to take care of these people then like yes i want to be paid accordingly for it yeah now would i trade that for a uh social um a social safety net of health insurance because i have to get private health insurance which is shady um i don't get any

disability insurance i have no sick leave. Right. Because you're a pinch hitter. You're not like salaried anywhere. Yeah. But would I trade this high salary for a social safety net? Personally, I would. Yes. But I mean, nobody's going to say like, yes, you will be able to retire with dignity if you play by all of these rules. They don't believe that. I want to make the money. Yeah. I mean, we're all always in this kind of like, yeah, sock away as much as you can while it's

coming situation. And geez, especially if you're doing something you're going to need to recover from later. Right. Like this is, I've done overseas work. I understand kind of the nature of like trauma. And while you're doing the job at the rate you're doing it, you're also like pushing off a day of reckoning mentally. And by God, having a cushion of savings helps with that. Yeah.

Like in the middle of it, you're in it. And then, you know, sometimes it's weeks, sometimes it's months. I hiked the Colorado Trail for mental health. And half of those nights I had ICU nightmares. So I was in these beautiful middle of nowhere places where everything was quiet. I would wake up with all of the beeps and people dying in my head night after night after night. You know? Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I'm angry that they don't want to compensate me for that. Because, I mean, they're definitely not paying for my therapist. They definitely aren't giving me access to disability if I need it. Right. Like, yeah. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and dare enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonoro. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story Separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well.

Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming

and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Because obviously, again, you're a contractor effectively. There's not like a union for traveling nurses, is there?

Or am I wrong about that? No. So, I mean, the only thing you have is your negotiating power. So I have eight years of experience between emergency and ICU and a lot of very big and highly regarded hospitals. I'm a hot commodity to them. I can pick and choose who I want to work with compared to someone that has less desirable specialties. Not that those specialties don't also work as hard,

but they're just harder. They're easier to staff. So therefore they're not. Yeah. It's a market thing. Sure. Right. It's a market thing.

I definitely don't believe that my specialties are more like inherently valuable just in terms of the market. So, you know, so I get, I can, I have the luxury of turning down contracts that aren't what I want, but I mean, I have no idea what I'm walking into. So on get, I can, I have the luxury of turning down contracts that aren't what I want, but

I mean, I have no idea what I'm walking into. So on Monday, I'll walk into somewhere. Um, they said, you'll do some paperwork, you'll get your orientation. You'll have, it'll all be, it'll be a busy day and then you'll be on your own. And I have no idea. Sometimes you're oriented in one unit and you never see that unit again. So, um, and I, you know, you have no idea what you're walking into. And how long are these contracts generally for?

So before COVID, the standard nursing contract was 13 weeks. Okay. Since COVID, a lot of them are shorter and I've only done short contracts because if it's a decent place, then I can renew and stay longer usually. And if it's a bad place, then I'm pretty happy to get out early. So I do between four and eight week contracts. And I usually do 60 plus hours a week. Is there any kind of like organization that you've seen come together a little more

between people who are doing this gig since you don't have kind of representation? Is that something that started to take form in the last two years since COVID? I mean, there's definitely a lot of talk about it. I think like those of us that started traveling since the pandemic, I would say that I've only done crisis contracts. Like I've never done a normal 13 week, 36 hour a week,

not crisis assignment. Like I've only gone into the shit show hotspots. And so therefore like my needs and desires are different than somebody who likes that previous lifestyle. So in some ways it's a little bit hard for us to kind of agree on common goals because we have a lot of different, you know, we're a very diverse group of nurses. Yeah. Definitely the Million Nurse March is kind of a step towards that. Yeah. Tell me about that. What is this? Because I just learned about this pretty recently.

Yeah. So I dropped off the grid for the last five days, which was fantastic for me, but it means I'm also just starting to figure it out. So the kind of general idea is that, you know, we have, I think I'm going to, hopefully I don't get it wrong. I have 4 million, some nurses in the country, a huge number of nurses in the country and a huge number of dropping out. You know, hundreds of thousands quit last year. They, I think one estimate is 500,000 may quit this year. And we were, just so people know, tens of thousands of nurses understaffed before COVID. Yes. Right.

Right. And, you know, I think one of the things to understand, too, is that, like, if you work, I don't know, what's a normal type of job that people work? I don't know. If you work at the DMV. A bookman. Oh, right. Right. If you work at the DMV and the DMV is slow, you will still stay there eight hours and you'll still get paid for your eight hours. If you are a normal nurse and you work 36 hours and

the ER is running slow, they could say, we're just canceling you for the rest of the day. Go home. We won't pay you for those last six hours. And so like, we've always had pretty like flexible, uh, like we've never had a minute. Most of the places I've worked have never had guaranteed hours. And so one of the reasons to go to travel contracts too, is also so you can at least have guaranteed hours. So there's a lot of kind of protections that nurses have never really had like guaranteed hours, um, like, uh, staff ratios. So some States, California and Oregon are, Oregon are two of them. If you go into the ICU, which is the highest level of care, so people are actively dying, actively unstable, things can go

bad within seconds. Usually it's a one nurse will have two patients, which is pretty much all you can handle because there are multiple drips, multiple types of life support, keeping them alive. So ventilators, um, being the one that we see the most. Um, and it's really your responsibility to know every inch of that person's body, um, and everything going on with them. And you really direct a lot of their care. Um, so two to one kind of makes a lot of sense since the pandemic and not having enough nurses, sometimes that's led to three to one or even in bad situations, four to one. So one of the statistics that one of the kind of nurse influencers and comedians, Nurse Blake talks about is that for every additional patient that a nurse takes on, and I believe he's talking about med cert, not ICU,

I believe he's talking about med cert, not ICU, that that patient's mortality increases by 7%. So yeah, so asking a nurse to do more with less is not just like, hey, just suck it up, be busier. This is actively contributing to people's disability and early deaths. So one of the things that the Millionaire's March wants to talk about is mandated staffing ratios. So ICU would be two to one. Med Surge is usually four to one. I think ER, they're asking for three to one. So these have been studied by the American Nurses Association and other sort of nursing organizations. And not only do they make your job as a nurse so much better, because we go into nursing because we want to fix things and take care of people. We want good outcomes, right? Like you don't go into nursing to just run around with your head

cut off and watch everyone die, right? Like that's terrible. You go into nursing because you want the people to get better under your care and you want to be able to give them that. And so when you're asked to take care of more patients than you're able to, you're not able to do that. And it just crushes you. So not only is it better for nurse satisfaction, it also saves patients' lives and also prevents things that cause lasting disability, like ventilator-associated pneumonia or bed sores or delirium or things like that. So, you know, mandating patient ratios is one of the really big things that the Million

Nurse March is for. There's a lot of talk about pay and living wages, you know, like every section, housing prices and inflation have gone through the roof. Sure, because you've got to like be renting a spot whenever you're like the hospital ain't putting you up. Right. Well, and for staff nurses too,

right? Like if you're, you know, maybe, maybe they gave you a 2% raise, but Hey, rent increased 30%. Sure.

Um, I used to be on the interview board at my old hospital and we would just tell people like, if you're moving to Denver as a single person, we lose most of our nurses cause they haven't looked at housing so like they'll accept a job and then they'll look for a place to live and be like oh i can't afford to live here so hey like i mean we can't ask if you're single moving here but like you probably can't afford to live here with what we're gonna pay you jeez i mean cool i i it's just – it's so eternally frustrating that like the one thing that everybody when you sit them down agrees is incontrovertibly necessary, medical care.

We can agree on a lot of things but not how to make sure the people doing it have a good quality of life and good income. Like we can, we have all these fun, fun rules that make it possible to charge X number of thousand dollars for a dose of insulin. But we don't just have a law that's like, hey, if, if you're working full time as a nurse, maybe you shouldn't have to be housing insecure. I don't know. How do you make that into a law? But it seems like there should be some option for a country that can make some of the things we make. Yeah. I mean, tying wages to housing prices seems like, I don't know, me not being an economist and not being an administrator, that sounds super easy to me. Housing goes up 15%, everybody gets a 15% raise. I'm sure it's more complicated than that,

but it seems super simple to me. Send a guy around with a stick to threaten landlords when they raise rent? We could debate the answers to this. Sure. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura

podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes every Thursday. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, películas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators,

sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral.

Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What do you think? I mean, not that you have any sort of comprehensive knowledge of all of the people doing this, but do you think there's a possibility of a wildcat strike, which is, again, for people who maybe aren't, is when there's a strike of like a wildcat strike which is again for people who maybe are is when there's a strike of workers who are not unionized um i mean to some extent with everybody quitting to do travel nursing it's not so different i mean some units have lost 80 percent of their staff good lord yeah right um like when a unit says oh well we lost 50 of my staff i'm kind of like well

you did better than most you know um so in some ways it's already happening and in that same way i am seeing hospitals give better incentives to their this nurses that have stayed um either retention bonuses or um increasing bonuses for pick for core staff picking up extra shifts or kind of other perks like increasing education benefits or things like that. So I think hospitals are responding to like, hey, we don't want to lose these people to traveling. Like, can we tip the balance a little bit? And I think, you know, overall hospital leadership is moving slower than they need to. But I mean, at least they're moving a little bit. And I think, you know, overall hospital leadership is moving slower than they need to. Um, but I mean, at least they're moving a little bit. So, I mean, in that way I can see a wildcat

strike, um, just coming from the kind of labor forces at play. Um, and I could, and I mean, there were one of the hospitals in the South, think it was alabama all of their staff their staff coordinated um so that the ship that was on agreed to stay late because you can't because abandoning patients um can put your license at risk right so if we all walked off in the middle of a shift and said fuck you to the hospital administrators and patients died then like our license is at risk so we also have to kind of balance that a little bit yeah but there was a hospital they organized for the day shift basically to stay as late as they needed and night shift all stood outside the hospital and wouldn't refuse to clock it in so sometimes these things are happening in small levels um also um really interesting

yeah yeah because it is like yeah um i mean and that is like such a tough thing to balance just the idea that like well you are health care workers like withholding your labor is a thing that's going to be necessary from time to time there's also consequences for it that are not present if you're making i don't know tires you know yeah and as much as teachers and nurses are the same like i i don't know, tires, you know? Right. Yeah. And as much as teachers and nurses are the same, like I don't think our country cares about educating children as much as it cares about their parents dying, you know? Yes.

For better or worse. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's another subject. Is there anything else you wanted to get into today before we close out for the episode? I mean, if it's okay with you, and you can cut it if it's not, you know, I try and tweet about kind of what's happening on the ground. Yeah, absolutely. And the things that I'm seeing. And I'm mostly finished with a book about the first year on the front line and seven different hospitals and kind of the disparities between, you know, critical access in New Mexico versus

trauma hospitals in, you know, the Bay Area and kind of what that first year looked like. So if you want, you can follow me on Twitter. It's Anne, A-N-N-E, like Anne of Green Gables, Anne RN 2020, which is when I started travel nursing. You know, and so that I kind of talk a little bit about like what I'm seeing and what's going on. I was recently in an ER where, you know, people often had to stay outside under the heat lamps for 30 hours waiting for a hospital bed just because everything was packed. So they couldn't even come inside the hospital and they were waiting to get their appendix out and things like that. Yeah.

Again, wear your seatbelts and a helmet. Be real careful right now, guys. Right. And I mean, I think the other thing is the blood shortage. So most hospitals are revising their guidelines of who will get a blood transfusion. So you now have to be much more critical before they will give you a blood transfusion. So, um, there's a lot of politics around blood donation, but if you feel like you can donate blood, um, it's really desperately needed.

Um, and people are gonna wear your seatbelts because people are really going to legitimately die because we run out of blood. Yeah. Um, boy, howdy, please wear your seatbelts because people are really going to legitimately die because we run out of blood. Yeah. Boy, howdy. Please wear your seatbelts, folks. Just hunker down for a little while. No new risky experiments in life for just a minute. Not the time to take up skydiving.

Yeah, yeah. Maybe avoid that. Maybe don't go skiing if you haven't gone skiing before. Avoid that. Maybe don't go skiing. If you haven't gone skiing before. I just did that and broke my wrist because I'm I'm exactly as dumb as the people I'm trying to warn. And then I guess just check in with your mental with your the mental health of your health care workers, because I mean, so many people have. You know, I think a lot of us are dealing with at least passive sort of like, fuck, maybe I should just drive off the road instead of going into work today, sort of thoughts, you know? And for a lot of us,

that's just that fleeting thought. And then we get our shit together. But for some people, it's going to be more than that. And, you know, nursing is one of those things where people have to find themselves by their career.

And they need people in their lives saying like, if you are never a nurse again, you are still valued. You are still loved. Just being alive is enough. And this is how, you know, we can help take care of you if you need to quit for three months, you know? And supporting people with their intrinsic value rather than like, you are only productive and valuable because you are there saving lives. Because I think a lot of us really get stuck in that. And a lot of us are drawn into nursing because we feel some lack of worthiness without it, you know?

Well, that's the hard thing to get other people to do, because in part, this is a society where we just have such generally crummy attitudes towards mental health. But like, we're great at saying things like, oh, you know, there's a pandemic. Our healthcare workers are heroes. You're all heroes because of the work that you're doing. The work makes you a hero as opposed to saying, hey, thank you for doing that. I know things are still fucked up right now. But if you decide you got to like take a break or whatever, you know, that doesn't mean like what you did was still wonderful and you're still great and valuable.

And maybe the best thing is for you to take that break and not drive yourself off of a cliff. Yeah. Yeah. That's harder to get people to wave banners that say outside of their apartment complexes. Right. Maybe you'd be good if people were like, banging on pots to like, let healthcare workers know that no matter what they do, they're valued members of the community that people love. But yeah. All right. Well, Anne, thank you so much for talking with us today. I hope

you hold together and help the people in your life hold together, which is all any of us can really do other than wear a seatbelt. Yeah. And thank you for being a part of the conversation and thank you for, you know, listening to hard things. And, you know,

that's one thing that I think we really appreciate is people who will actually listen with open hearts and, and we'll witness this with us so that we're not alone in it. It could happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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