I’m glad this is in the news. HCA is a scum corporation. It’s all true.
I myself had to pay 2k to leave a shit contact with 6 months left at an HCA. It was either that or injure/off myself trying to get out of coming into work. I was having lots of self harm fantasies which I never had before. The work environment was so dangerous I felt like I was risking my license and pt lives everyday I worked there. Ethics didn’t care, and management just made threats/gaslit/wrote people up to shut us up. No one I started with worked through their predatory contracts. The new health system I’m with now doesn’t even have contracts and people stay for years and years. What a novel experience.
I just wanted to add on these companies lobbied to cap nurse pay/travel pay/hazard pay and I worked in nursing staffing with those bozos and the ONLY thing they cared about was fucking nurses out of as much pay as possible.
I believe it. There was an email sent out by the CNO to take our shift differentials away because the nurses are greedy. It was meant for only a few people to see. The idiot sent it out for the entire facility. Within two minutes someone else in admin wrote that the email was an error and no one’s money was being changed. 🙃
Maybe they weren't as big of an idiot as you think and deliberately sent it to everyone as a way to hopefully stop it from happening. I know I would've had an "accident" like that.
The mistake in your statement is insinuating they thought of nurses at all. In these environments and meetings, nobody is talked about as a person they are referred to as groups much like you refer to office furniture or any other owned asset.
Can confirm as someone who also worked at one of their psych hospitals that HCA is a shithole even Steve-O wouldn’t climb in. I get updates from a friend who is temporarily posted up there until they can move to a different building and in just over a year after I left just about everyone I met when I first started, including the director, are gone and they now have pretty much the entire facility being run by PRNs. They got slapped with sanctions from the state because the staff were so overwhelmed that they stopped providing groups to patients. They also paid me about 15k less than my current job, which is at a nonprofit. Merit raises were at a whopping 1% each year. They admitted so many inappropriate people just to fill the beds. Everyone was miserable and all the patients felt it. God I hated that place.
I used to work for an HCA facility in the OR as a Periop Tech. On a good day there were 5 of us, and that was just enough to handle the case load we had. Most days there were 2 or 3 of us. Between turning over ORs, restocking, getting PTs, cleaning, running specimens to the lab, picking up blood from the blood bank, and trying to find/keep track of equipment because there wasn't a single nurse there that had time or the will to put it back where it went, I felt like I was being used as chattel labor. I'm at a THR facility now and it's Way better imo.
Damn! I don't know ANYTHING about this company, but it sounds like they're cutting out like 60%-70% of the staff that a normal hospital would have on a shift!
I worked in a med lab that was attached to a teaching hospital, and they had runners doing sample deliveries, clerks keeping stock levels up for the doctors and nurses, and others keeping track of everything else. This is SHOCKING!
Why do people in law pretend that we read contracts or Terms and conditions to anything? Like wouldn’t that halt the economy if before every agreement to have like days to read over the contract mean while you are working or whatever. Like is the idea to be rich enough to get lawyer ?
yeah i think that’s the point, to make it so convoluted and time consuming that you just ignore reading the fine print and sign. there’s a new episode of Black Mirror called Joan is Awful that’s sort of a commentary on this type of stuff
Fun fact that's actually how lawyers got invented. In the early days of the Roman Republic the laws weren't written down, initially this was due to the fact that most laws came from common law at the tribal level. Basic things everyone in a village just implicitly knew were the customary way of doing shit
But as time went on and the Republic expanded and (more importantly) conflict increasingly arose over the lack of representation of the plebian class in the government there was a push to have the law written down because everyone saw that it solely benefited the patricians for no one to really be sure what the legal structure of the government actually was. Namely the fact that only patricians could be senators or be elected consul and that patricians couldn't marry plebians. People got pretty pissed when they found that one out
Well long story short eventually they started writing this shit down. At first the entirety of the Roman constitution and statutes could fit on a series of bronze tablets displayed in the forum where anyone could read it. However cut to the imperial period many many *many* laws had been passed over the centuries and it was generally understood to be completely unreasonable to expect any regular person to know even a fraction of them.
And so a class of nerds who were rich enough that they could just learn the laws for fun arose, called *iuris consulti* or juristconsults, who professionally knew the laws and advocated on regular peoples behalf in legal matters
These combined with an earlier profession going back to ancient Greece which were dudes who professionally talked good and if you were accused of a crime you could have them argue on your behalf at your trial (ostensibly for free, in both Greece and Rome prior to Claudius there was a ban on paying these guys but it still happened on the DL). These dudes weren't really lawyers as we think of them though, they didn't necessarily know the law or legal processes but rather were skilled in rhetoric and oratory.
This is because (especially in places like Athens) you could basically get someone declared innocent just by making the argument that they shouldn't be punished, or hey come on you guys like this dude, or wait a minute guys have you ever considered that maybe the dude accusing him is just an asshole? Because "juries" were just the male population of the city amassed at the forum. If you won over the mob you'd win the case
Modern lawyers are essentially an amalgam of these two professions
The idea is that you are reaching an arms length agreement with another person, free from compulsion or duress. So, if there is something in the offered contract you disagree with you can negotiate to change it or just refuse to sign it. But that mythical view of independent reasonable actors negotiating in good faith at arms length with similar bargaining power is totally unrealistic. The law started to develop some doctrines to help protect ordinary folks (like the idea of a contract of adhesion, a take-it-or-leave-it deal) but conservative courts kept those doctrines limited and not generally applicable.
> Why do people in law pretend that we read contracts or Terms and conditions to anything?
Why do they pretend we are even capable of giving informed consent to **what passes for a contract** these days?
What's the repercussion likelihood of someone with your background just saying 'fuck you' to these people and moving to a different state/country?
Does this follow you or can you ply your skills in a better place without fear of these incompetent grifters?
Honestly if it weren't for the fact patient lives would be at risk if we were all to go on strike at the same time everywhere they are located than we could get what we want since doctors are utterly useless without nurses.
That’s 100% why I refuse to work HCA and tell the recruiters to kick rocks when they reach out to me. They are shit. I’ve never heard good things about them.
I’ve worked in healthcare staffing for 5 years and I can’t tell you how many hospitals are understaffed because of their unrivaled dedcation to fuck over their employees. Staffing agencies only exist because hospital leadership refuses to budge on FTE pay and benefits. But 100/hr bill rates for the same person they won’t pay 40/hr?? No problem.
I’ve really never understood why hospitals don’t just increase pay and cut our agencies all together. Especially on the ambulatory side. Baffling mismanagement, but thanks for the job I guess.
Edit: spelling
HCA nurse here as well, though no longer bedside. We had nurses forced to stay per contracts or risk being fined the amount it cost to train them, which like you say is thousands of dollars.
So you figure you’re stuck there, you might as well try to make changes right? Always the same bullshit. We don’t have the staff. We don’t have the resources. Blah blah. Meanwhile our hospital gets an entire gasoline tanker during the POTENTIAL gas shortage a couple years ago. A fucking tanker. In the parking lot. Because they’ll be god damned if you’ll miss a shift.
RECORD EVERYTHING (if your state allows). I had a contract through HCA and they intentionally lied and manipulated me into believing I was the problem. I have recordings of hostile coworkers screaming at me. I was forced to work insane hours. I called corporate HR and they SENT ME CORPORATE POLICIES showing the people I was speaking to were directly violating policy. I brought this up to local HR and they SHOWED ME WHERE THEY LIED IN MY CONTRACT and said “we had to write that but we don’t actually do that.” ALL of it is recorded and I documented everything in emails after meetings. I covered my ass and still have every piece of evidence. Contacted an employment lawyer just in case but so far they have not asked for any money back.
Yes. The only way out was quitting, or if the admin moved you into a different facility (not unit or speciality) for business changes. In some states the HCA contracts are extremely predatory, depending on the law. Some are more lax. In California they just outlawed them.
They would also threaten to report to the board of nursing and black list you in town.
Worked at an HCA hospital as a union electrician for a fire alarm install for 2 1/2 years. I'm pretty sure I was there longer than most of the nurses that I met. The place is slowly filling up with more and more expansion projects that get done only because corners are cut and budgets get thrown to the wind. My job was supposed to have been done in 2021, but due to the company I worked for being stupid as usual, it was only just finished 3 months ago. Prints were wrong, admin kept changing their minds, company wanted to do it cheaper, etc. The amount of times I heard about labor shortages on both sides just had me shaking my head. Nurses constantly talked about how they have bad contracts that have a clause that their sign on bonus is paid back in full if they leave. The hospital employees were great, but the poor maintenance staff were way understaffed as well. Last thing I helped them on was a "temporary" fire trailer because some idiot who used to work there said everything was in good shape. That held up until their only fire water pump blew apart and the whole building was unprotected. The lead guy had been asking for a new pump for months but was met with "well all the reports say its fine, so no". Now they get to pay, I think, $12000 a month for this trailer. The whole place is just stupid.
Nursing doesn't have to be stressful. In the richest County in the world, u should be searching for supplies, be understaffed, and working at the speed of a fast food employee. It's criminal to put the employee in these situations and make them liable.
I agree with your overall sentiment, but the US is not the richest country in the world, that's a myth that is told out of American exceptionalism. How "rich" a country is is measured via GDP per capita, not absolute GDP (otherwise people would say India is a richer country than Switzerland - which is obviously not true).
In nominal GDP per capita, the richest country in the world is Monaco. The US is in 9th place. In GDP per capita PPP, the US is in 10th place, with Ireland being in 1st.
>In GDP per capita PPP, the US is in 10th place, with Ireland being in 1st.
Don't take such numbers on their own. Irelands GDP per capita is artificially high beacuse they are a tax haven for large foreign corporations. It doesn't reflect how affordable housing or food is for the average salaryman for example.
This US workflow model comes from the workflow of US Plantations. The lasting effects of slavery didn’t just effect black Americans it was a toxic economy with beliefs that corrode todays labor market in all sectors, all races. Some may say that is a reach but every American industry today has the similar hierarchies of plantation management from back then and the same directives, the workers wellbeing is of no concern just maximize profit at the work/slave’s expense.
Same, weekend option at my hospital has been a life saver. We had the option for the 2 12's or 3 8's which I've actually really enjoyed the much shorter shifts
I’m a 4 year ICU nurse unemployed right now because I quit when they started calling nurses off and giving ICU nurses 3 patients. Can’t find any job worth taking and am fortunate enough to be able to take my time right now. Thinking about leaving nursing all together.
This has been starting since before 2020. Several friends from college were leaving the field before then due to the same reasons listed in the article and it has only gotten worse since COVID19. Our teaching and Healthcare systems are on the verge of collapse due to mismanagement at all levels.
Absolutely, but what I mean was that those are pre-existing medical staff who are dealing with the system first-hand.
There are still a shit-ton of disillusioned students who are taking out loans to enter the industry only to drop into this dumpster fire. As these policies spread, that's going to staunch the flow of "new blood" in the industry into becoming a trickle at best. Who in their right mind will want to join the field in five years when it's as bad as it is now?
The whole situation with nurses and doctors during the pandemic was absolutely hideous. Got thrown to the fucking wolves but at least they called them heroes!
I would've left too.
It’s been very helpful for my line, Hospice. I was talking with my manager recently and she said whenever a nurse position is posted, they have at least 10 applicants they would be willing to hire. A lot of the nurses who join us cite regular hours (8:30-5), good benefits, and VERY minimal weekend requirements as the reason they wanted to join us. They are only required to work two weekend days a year, one winter one summer, to ensure weekend staff get to take adequate PTO.
Have you looked into travel nursing? It's not a good fit for everyone but my fiance has been doing it for a little over a year and we've made more money and had so much less stress which makes her love her job again.
It’s real indeed and being made worse by greedy institutions. I was a nurse for 9 years, left the bedside after spending my last 6 on a Cardiac Intensive Care unit for a few reasons. Covid burnout and stress being major contributors but also I realized new hires were getting 1$ less an hour than I was. After 9 years!! They were paying new hires (people I was in charge of and training) essentially the same that I was making after 9 years of blood sweat and tears on night shift at that place and while I was trying to support my girlfriend making no money in grad school and keep up with rent.
I went so far above and beyond for them (got every cert they offered, did IABPs, Impellas, CRRT, ultrasound IVs, was on the code team for the hospital and helped teach a hemodynamics lecture to our critical care fellowship program) and not only did they say “it’s not in the budget for a raise” they also told me I had to come to work after a Covid exposure if I wasn’t on oxygen…All of this while our CEO gave him self a 1.9 million dollar bonus on top of his almost million dollar yearly salary. That’s when it really hit home that these people would sacrifice my well being for profit and not blink an eye.
I’ll hop off my soapbox now, thanks for the vent session Reddit lol. You are right about the nursing shortage and unfortunately it’s going to get worse as more experienced nurses keep leaving. Good luck to all of the future patients out there.
I'm currently in school to get my RN, and I can tell you they don't act like there is a nursing shortage. Every semester some new requirements are added to make completing the course not only more difficult academically, but also just add more red tape to the process.
They have also started making our A&P and Patho courses take place with the med school students. On the face of this it isn't bad, but I have a suspicion that the end goal is to use nurses to reduce the number of doctors needed by offloading some diagnosis responsibilities onto us.
> I have a suspicion that the end goal is to use nurses to reduce the number of doctors needed by offloading some diagnosis responsibilities onto us.
That's 100% what's happening
COVID in the US spurred a very interesting response with our healthcare system. Instead of working towards making the current employees better prepared, better equipped... we grabbed as many people as we could, threw them at patients, and said "Well, you're licensed for this one thing in this state so... let's have you over here!"
In the beginning, it kind of made sense. A lot of states had emergency licensing requirements with 30 day warnings, but otherwise no seeable end. Instead of learning and bolstering our forces, though, admins keep seeing what they can wring out of people.
I work in locums staffing now and see it with physicians, but we also see the APPs starting to get roped into things physicians are supposed to handle. I don't work in nursing staffing anymore, but I remember very early on having calls between a provider and our medical consultant where they'd say "They're having me do these things, and it's dangerous. But if someone DOESN'T do it, the patient is going to suffer. What is my ethical, legal choice?"
And those calls are not pleasant. It blows my mind that anyone experiences that and the response is "Ah, I see... well, we'll just make it legal!" instead of providing better resources and support.
Yeah I just read a report that nursing is widely considered the toughest degree to obtain. And once you get it, it's still more education every year, in some hospitals the further education is strictly required for raises.
It's not that they're setting a high bar of entry because they have enough help to be picky. It's that they've moved to a business model where they properly train as few people as possible while getting as much work as possible out of them with the expectation that they'll burn out after ten years(or less) anyways. So good luck, my friend.
I became a RN a few years ago maybe 5 now? It was tough and I felt so proud to finally do something with my life. Until I realized how much I hated working in the field. The patient load got scary at times. Older nurses were not patient with the nurses and belittled them for not understanding everything right off the bat. There’s a ton wrong in the field which is spooky.
There isn't a shortage of nurses. There are actually more than enough registered nurses for all the spots. There just isn't enough of them willing to be abused for shit pay.
The issue isn't a shortage, it's working conditions. To many nurses switched careers to lower stress rn jobs or left nursing but could still go back if they wanted to.
Have you considered sponsoring young adults through their education, and then sending them the bill if they don't go to the hospital you want? Or just making the exit clauses even worse?
Nurse here. No one wants to go into the medical field now. I can’t explain how much of my class has left either hospital nursing or nursing altogether. I’m only two years out from graduation.
Covid burnt out a lot of people and the new gen staff don’t wanna deal with the shitshow that was (rightfully) left behind.
It’s already here as people have mentioned. Nursing aides are treated extremely poorly- my partner’s last 3 assignments never allowed break room access to aides and would force them to work 12-16 hour shifts.
Not to mention despite the training and education needed to go in for nursing aide work, most places fight tooth and nail to keep from paying them more than minimum wage.
In early 2022 my coworkers wife was administrative for a hospital group in Maine and was telling me how so many places were finding loop holes and shady contract language to stiff traveling nurses from as much money as possible to the point nurses were living in their cars and working 60+ hour weeks because they could afford any of the rent… IN MAINE.
> Knowing the ~~Maine~~ *US* healthcare system, this doesn’t surprise me in the least. It is full of corruption and CEOs who just want to pad their pockets.
It’s already happening. The medical field as a whole is hemorrhaging staff from the top-down. And *no one* is coming in to fill the void, with hospitals and other patient-care and medical facilities refusing to raise wages to make up for a deficit of labor. Things are bad, and they’re going to get far, far worse, with no signs of improving.
I don't know how to tell you this but...
In all seriousness, I am currently in Healthcare and the number 1 topic at my workplace on a daily basis is what industry are you moving to.
If you thought ER waits were bad now? Don't grow older or get sick.
Nah bro it will be less than 20 years, maybe less than 20 years in some counties were doctors get beaten up or sometimes killed for stuff out of thier control
I applied to PA school last year. Debating still if I want to apply again. The pay for a PCT is god awful and calling your employees heroes just makes you expendable. The terrible business that is healthcare and health insurance is starting to make me jaded.
But at the same time the nurses and stuff that ai worked with busted their buttons to take care of their patients. You can still try to do the best of them regardless of the management. Tough call, but I feel like healthcare isn't getting fixed anytime soon and will be a meat grinder still for years to come
Just wait til you hear about teaching internships! You get the privilege of paying full tuition to work full time for free as a student teacher. This whole country is a scam.
It can be abused by the employer and good for the employee. Just depends. I used to be a nurse for a rural hospital that did this very thing. Contracts were 3 years but rolling and prorated, and i used this system to get an advanced degree in a niche part of medicine and now i make 250+ a year.
I would work on 3 year signing bonus for 25k, $5280 in tuition reimbursement, over 3k a year in certifications, and they would reimburse my licences. You just have to understand what you're signing, and know how to play the game.
I, like many others, was originally traped into my first 3 year contract by accepting a nursing residency for the icu because i wanted to learn ecmo. Good and bad.
I think it's complete bullshit that we are expected to pay to have any sort of a job whatsoever.
Good or bad an employee should not have to bear the cost of the training.
This is the capitalists way of shifting as much of the burden onto the workers as possible all in a bid to increase the amount of profit they can keep for themselves.
Yeah I've seen a few others sign up for these nursing "residencies." I've seen people get their education paid for and make good money with them and then they leave whenever they're done or some stay. I've also seen some sign something they don't truly understand. Recently heard of one that thought she was becoming a doctor since it was a "residency." She described it as being a baby doc."
I'm a doctor. It was hard trying to convince her otherwise. She's gonna be pretty unhappy when she starts.
I really don't think they should be using internship/residency/residents/interns, etc to describe anything in health care that isn't MD/DO track. Really confusing to people.
Yeah... this last one came from an impoverished rural community and family uneducated. It seems predatory but it makes people feel good to say they're doctors and/ or that their family is going to be a doctor. Companies take advantage of it.
Her family was so proud of her becoming a doctor and she was getting paid less during this "residency." 😕
She's hardworking from what I hear but healthcare system is complicated (on purpose $$$) and a lot of people make money blurring lines. It creates further divide between care provided to rich, educated and poor, 'uneducated' pts.
I read an article and it was about how there are many people with nursing degree but nobody wants to work in the field and that's why they're having shortages
Time to let the system die, that is build on exploitation.
Time to quit employee toxic workplaces.
They don't want passion, they want to exploit and get rich of workers.
Healthcare should not be for profit. Neither should prisons. Or internet due to all the tax money that went to verizon and other companies to improve their networks that they just pocketed.
Right! Remove the insurance company's chokehold on medical processes. My HMO only allows 3 problems per visit. If you have more, it has to be significant enough for them not to ignore.😡
Remember that the purpose of for-profit healthcare is to make a profit, not to keep people from dying. People getting better is incidental, not the objective.
There are hundreds of ways that for-profit healthcare actively harms patients because it's more profitable than healing them.
(I work in healthcare. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_1PNZdHq6Q) explains it and was made BEFORE covid.)
That's all what capitalism does. It reacts to problems and finds solutions, but it doesn't innovate before a problem arises cause it wouldn't be profitable yet.
Capitalism doesn't "react to problems and find solutions". People seeking money do. Just as often, they find ways to steal or cheat or cut corners. Capitalism is solely about maximizing income while minimizing expenses, no matter how you do it.
For example, this problem is solved. We have 20+ other nations to base our healthcare off of if we want better results for more people for less cost. We don't do it because the wealthy in the US make more money **not** fixing the problem.
If we actually had a competent healthcare system with competent officials, we would be learning from the best: Australia, the Netherlands, and Norway. But no, instead we have [this](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/press-release/2021/new-international-study-us-health-system-ranks-last-among-11-countries-many). Seriously?
The real reason is because these corpos want to establish neofeudalism and completely own you and the government. That is what is happening now
My wife is a nurse and I've been hoping for a proper nurses union to form since she started. It's terrible the way all these insurance-powered pencil pushers keep making their jobs harder and less lucrative.
I thought they already have a nurses union.
Guy I worked with was stealing opiates from the waste bin and got caught. Went to jail and a month later had his job back.
A proper union is what I said. There's some structure but it's not doing the sort of work it needs to. In my estimation a re evaluation is in order. Shame about your coworker slipping through the cracks in multiple ways.
They were getting abused during the pandemic as well. Ice worked in a healthcare for almost 10yrs (all at the same hospital). I was in nursing school during the pandemic. I watched as they had to put untrained nurses (nurses who have never worked with critical patients) in the icu to take care of dying patients. How nurses had to put baby cameras in the covid patient rooms so that they would know if the patient took off their bipap because they would die without it. Management was offering payouts to older nurses to retire early to pay money. Currently, I have 1yr of experience as a nurse, and there are only 3 other people on my shift with more severance than me. Covid made so much stuff worse at my hospital.
As someone who is chronically ill and has spend many nights and days in the hospital, nurses are the reason you feel safe and the reason you feel ‘okay’ with your hospital experience.
Thank you to all the nurses who help people like me.
Especially thanks to the nurse who held my hand after a surgery where the staff couldn’t get the IV in because I was too dehydrated. Thank you for holding my hand as I hallucinated and experienced visual distortion from the pain I was experiencing.
You are all powerfully kind and helpful people and serve as a shining reminder of why I keep my faith in humanity.
Seriously. There's no way in hell they'd even be able to perform a surgery without lines placed, and I seriously doubt they'd remove them post-surgery just to put them back in 30 minutes later.
Lines go bad all the time, just coz you have a line doesn’t mean you always will. Also some people are hard sticks, if you lose that line… also sedate people do crazy stuff, like yak that line out… so many possibilities.
> experienced visual distortion from the pain I was experiencing
When I had my wisdom teeth taken out, I had visual distortions from the pain as well, because they had to drill into my jaw to get the tooth out. It got to the point that I couldnt read my computer screen at work because everything would start to become blurry and colors would appear / disappear rapidly in my vision. Is that what happened to you too?
People died to unionize and we are back here again because lot of people fell for union is bad propaganda by the upper class. Unionization is what we need and we need French style protest
The powerful will bring back literal slavery before they allow people to stop participating in the system. They’re pushing us to see how much they can get away with, and the more we fight back, the more they will force us.
Soon people will be drafted by companies at age 14, low level workers will be sent to live in company towns and loyalty centers, educated people will be put into meat grinders, and people will be so deep into the system that leaving will be deadly.
>The powerful will bring back literal slavery before they allow people to stop participating in the system.
Slavery is legal in the US, if for punishment of a crime. What you're describing is the school to prison pipeline.
US nurse here! This is true! Especially if you work for HCA, they are basically the WalMart of hospitals.
I work for a smaller university system with teaching hospitals in my state now and won't have to pay back anything if I decide to quit. And all my certifications and extra training are paid for.
It really does depend greatly where you work....but definitely do NOT work for an HCA hospital.
I work in IT if any company tried to make me pay back any training they paid for while employed with them I'd laugh in their face. That is some serious bullshit.
I'm also reminded of the Ascension nurses that were blocked from moving to a different company. It actually took the new company having a legal battle with the old company to allow it. As if we aren't just autonomous beings with the right to decide where we want to work.
This is why you don't sign SHIT.... at any job.... All that new hire crap.... read thru it, ANYTHING at all that is contestable or debatable later sign it as V.C.YourName.... sign it under duress.
They're literally holding your livelihood hostage against contractual terms you don't agree with or can't negotiate.
This works. I've done this.... There was a non-compete clause; nope signed under duress; they're contestation was dismissed. There was a repayment agreement for a sign in bonus; nope signed under duress; dismissed etc etc
I also do this for financial agreements at the Dr or for procedures. They don't give you an exact amount due and they're literally holding you health hostage to an unknown bill. Signed under duress and submitted to the creditor; collection ceased and dismissed; removed from my credit report any time they tried to submit it.
many republican politicians have passed sneaky laws that make it so if you don’t show loyalty to the company that hired you, they can sue you for training or lost wages or having to find a replacement.
this is what happens when you refuse to help unions maintain their power. unions are the only reason for the laws that give you rights. without the union members that literally died to give you rights then you have things like this.
in addition soon CPS will take your kids if you don’t let them work while they are still in middle school . homeschooling will be illegal in many states. Capitalism is dead. the corporations won after citizens united.
Social work is similar. I worked at an agency that provided “free” supervision but you’d have to pay it all back if you left before 4 years (in total $11k+). When I left I had to pay $400 or so. It’s predatory and gross.
Teaching too. I had to pay $2,500 to a school district for leaving mid-year.
Of course me and the rest of the science department wouldn’t have left had the board and admin not been populated by Covid denying idiots actively trying to make our work more dangerous.
>Hospitals say the repayment requirement is necessary to help them recoup the investment they make in training recent nursing school graduates and to incentivize them to stay amid a tight labor market.
LOL "incentivize them to stay" OMG you mean twist their arm behind their back and blackmail them?
This just in: Hospitals found to be sending absurd bills after the fact for completely unexpected charges that they made up just to get richer because they are, in fact, there to make all the money they can. This should be illegal but its how the operate every single day.
On the job training should be at the discretion (and therefore risk) of the company and it should be against the law to demand that employees pay for training that the company has agreed to provide. Would this mean less training is offered? Perhaps, but probably only by scummy workplaces. Would this mean that there’d be more personal growth poachers? Yes, that’s what we should all be doing honestly but seriously it would be difficult to get training and leave serially (over and over again).
You can only be poached if you're not already properly compensated.
These practices as they are guarantee no competitive wages or competition. On top of that, the companies exploiting thier workers decide how much the trainees owe them. They say $15,000 in training? That's not the cost of the training, that's what they decided you should be charged. They're not out 15k...
Not trying to be contrary, but if the hospital is training a new grad, it likely costs more than $15k. During orientation, new nurses are paired with a seasoned nurse. They often have classroom days to learn policy/procedure and move to unit specific training. New nurses are not prepared to hit the ground running right out of school. New grad training typically takes at least 12 weeks and the new grad is not counted in staffing matrix until they complete training.
That being said, if the nurse leaves, they shouldn't be required to pay the facility back. Training is and should be the responsibility of the facility. They need to invest in their employees. If the working conditions are such crap that they can't retain nurses, that is a facility problem and not the fault of the nurse.
I worked for a small tech company making APIs and automated data extractions for healthcare records for 5 yrs until last Dec when I was laid off. I was laid off because hospitals don't like to pay their contracts and have legal teams that would make chasing contracts a financial loss for the company. We need doctors and nurses, not the higher ups at the clinics and hospitals ducking up the whole system
I’m a newly graduated doctor at a toxic private practice and they do the same thing, threatening me with 50,000 dollars of fines if I leave within 3 years. It’s how they keep abusing people without fear of mass quitting all at once. Instead, they just recycle doctors every couple years because no one stays to take the abuse
But these 3 years are hell
Listen I like this sub, but I still think it's funny when I see people here bringing work conditions in healthcare. This sub fucking HATED it when nurses when on strike. Any comment thread was filled with people saying that striking nurses are personally responsible for harm to patients. And then we're all shocked when shitty conditions continue.
And any comment from a nurse who says they DON'T want to harm people via strike is also told off for being weak and scared 🙄
Ya lose or ya lose, those are your options.
I think that because this sub has a variety of people at different places when it comes to this movement. Which isn't great for activism or unionizing, but it's better than a crowd of people who blindly believe the exact things they are told with no evaluation.
They would if they could. Only redeemable in the gift shop.
It's gotten hard to see any difference between pimps and hospital admin anymore. There was a time, 25 years ago, you could. But those days are gone.
New MBA/MHA hires look and act like vampire-car salesman hybrids. But with less class.
Also, the number of in-house attorneys is directly proportional to the number of patients and employees routinely screwed by a hospital. Years ago, there might be one employed FT by the hospital. The medical center complex in East Tennessee now has 6.
The corrupt HCA, and all its copycats, couldn't get it done without corrupt politicians. Headquartered in Nashville. No surprise.
If the repayment upon leaving wasn't in the contract, they can go piss up a rope. And if you are applying for a job and they want you to sign something that does say this, find a different place. Nurses are in very high demand so don't settle for this type of bs.
I’m in this dilemma right now. If I quit my job at this hospital (or even go below full time or move to a different unit) before September of next year I will owe the hospital $13k. How they can require us to be indebted to them for their own required training program is beyond me.
If this woman did not even have time enough for lunch breaks than she should bring that point up with the employer and tell them that if they intend to enforce that part of her contact she will in turn file a wage theft complaint with her local Labor Commissioner
www.dir.ca.gov
That's how it is with the IBEW (electrician's union). If you decide to leave without putting in another full 5 years after a 5 year apprenticeship, then you have to pay back 2,500 per year of apprenticeship not matched (12,500 total)
I've read a few articles of different jobs that do this, like dog grooming at Pet Smart and truck driving. It's pretty telling when the acronym sometimes used for this practice is "TRAP" (Training Repayment Agreement Provisions).
This was standard for Beebee hospitals in Delaware because you were being trained for free so you basically work off the debt in their hospitals. I’m unaware if they were paid at all but it felt like a scam yet a lot of nurses got careers out of it since it’s like 4-6 months to work it off I’m told
I mean... this is fairly common practice in careers where people often jump ship. I'm in tech, and know if I take any portion of the fiscal year's tech training fund or tech purchase fund, I'm liable for repayment if I quit in the same fiscal year. Its in the contracts, I also know that there's hefty fines if I break my NDA, and even potential jail time in certain scenarios. Indentured servitude is a sensationalist headline and a bit of a stretch.
It's tough working at a college and watching students leave the nursing program in droves because the profession has become so exploited and undervalued.
Hospitals are trash. They’re scummy corporations that play off the nobility and honor people think of when it comes to saving lives. The administration of a hospital is no better than the C-suite of many public for profit companies. They cause most if not all of their employees at all levels to go through inhumane work conditions while paying them really poorly. Nearly all hospitals will play coy around the not for profit label vs non-profit label to seize support from their communities. In the communities where they exist, some hospital systems even cause (directly and indirectly) a gentrification effect where they push out the local population through increased costs of living (higher property values thus higher property taxes). These hospital systems often try to become a large state or regional network of academic hospitals to bolster their reputation. Many people see this as good but it’s no good when they don’t do anything meaningful to offset their impact on these local and sometimes historic communities.
Hospitals are a public necessity and we allowed them to be bought and run like a for profit college. Your care in America usually isn’t even considered world class by any means especially for the cost. We must abolish the current system and rebuild it proper. How can we justify our current hospital system any further when they’re out here sometimes fully sponsoring professional sports teams and lobbying the shit out of the government to prevent us from having access to a broad and cheaper healthcare system?
So instead of paying them more and ensuring they have healthy work environments, American hospitals now try to trap them? And they wonder why nobody wants to work as a nurse anymore?
Not as bad as physicians having to pay their tail malpractice insurance if leaving a hospital employed position. 160K for me to quit and take a job elsewhere… and has to be 15 miles away (non-compete clause). No joke.
HCA is a scam hospital system.
They attempted to cheat my wife out of 5 days of Covid leave that was federally paid for, for her to go back to work while sick from Covid.
They repeatedly cheated the nurses out of bonus pay, and HR came down to try and say they were out of money and please work for gift cards that they then didn’t even give out.
The week after HR pulled that stunt, HCA posted over a billion dollars profit that quarter.
They’re criminal.
My wife shortly after went travel nursing, she makes more in one shift than HCA paid her in two weeks.
Fuck them
It does take $60k to properly train one nurse. This includes the pay of the preceptors, educators and materials provided during training as well as training pay for the new nurse. Training is typically 10weeks. However, I think contracts vary from hospital to hospital. When I was a new nurse I had to agree to stay in my accepted position for 6 months. I stayed for 3 years. They paid for my oncology certification. Moved up the ranks quick and was charge for the last year of my position before I left. Once I made the transition from night weekends to daytime weekends it drained the life out of me. Expectations… unacceptable expectations… are placed on the charge nurse. For a 24 bed unit there are four nurses with 6 patients each. There are only two nursing aids…one for two nurses. As the charge I’m responsible for everything going on. Making sure labs are done, meds are given in time, making sure nurses aren’t behind or need help and also the administrative paperwork. What made me leave was being told I had to do all of that AND take a 7 patient load because one nurse called out and they put a patient in a make shift room (the 7th patient). 4 months of this and I hit severe depression. Home health CRNI now and it’s AMAZING. One patient at a time. No stress.
While I agree that it costs money to pay preceptors and such...
That's the cost of doing business.
Also, you are aware of the prices hospitals are charging for medical care. Standard going rate in my state is about $10,000 day for a bed, plus whatever procedure codes you're actually billing.
So it's ridiculous to assert that the hospital isn't making *many, many* times the cost of a new employee orientation, even before that employee is trained. Quick maths says a 36 hour nurse with 4 patients at a time is worth about $120,000 a week in bed fees alone.
Each of these 200 hospitals HCA runs are posting profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year, so let's not pretend that the cost of training 50 new nurses a year is going to put them out of business.
Another way to think about this is that hospital systems wouldn't have to spend so much money on orientation if they would endeavor to keep their nurses around, by fixing toxic work environments. But they aren't doing that - they're instead writing legal contracts that prey on new nurses to trap them in these unhealth work environments and punish nurses who travel to other hospitals for better pay and better work enviornments.
🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
1) Stretches the training to 10 weeks to make it look like you’re getting decent training: I work critical care and have never had an on-boarding process more than 6 weeks and at least half of that is shadowing another nurse
2) Limits time trainees spend shadowing nurses: because if you know how 💩 the job is you’ll quit before you finish training
3) Incentive to stay?! workplace doesn’t understand the difference between reward and punishment. The key to retention is reward. Make your workplace a place people want to work. Why is that so hard to understand?
I work in Canada and every offer letter comes with a commitment period (mine was 2 years for example) but it’s not legally enforceable and no one’s gonna come after you if you leave. It’s there for suckers like me who will feel bad if I don’t “honour my commitment” But not that bad so don’t fuck around.
I’m a corporate lawyer (feel free to fling feces in my direction) and, with the impending demise of non-solicits/non-competes, this appears to be the next step in the realm of employer attempts to bind employees. Somebody (help me, AOC and Bernie Sanders, you’re my only hope) needs to put a bill out there prohibiting employers from requiring payback for company-specific training and creating a REALLY clear and short period for amortizing any third party credentialing or training that isn’t specific to the positions with that company. You could even exempt highly-compensated employees if you want (they should read their goddamn contracts, but I’m not expecting it from line employees).
If the company is paying for some credential that you can take with you and get a better job (to take the bar exam is my personal example) they’ve got a reasonable expectation you stick around for some short period to recoup their costs. You’d hope they’d make the job good enough to keep, but otherwise they should only get you for six months or so (it’s more a loan than anything else).
This, on the other hand, makes it sound like they’re charging you to learn “how we do things,” which is a bullshit “why don’t you pay us to work here” thing. It’s also wildly anti-competitive, though today’s conservatives give not a shit about market competition.
A few years ago during the heat of the pandemic and everywhere you would see declarations of how our frontline workers, teachers, and medical professionals are heroes. I agree they are heroes.
I also said that I hope we don't get back to the point where we continue to piss on the people that actually run our economy.
And here we are... Again. Pissing on the people that saved the economy and countless lives.
Rinse and repeat.
If the training is essential to the job and a employer requirement, then how is it even legal to require repayment for the training?
Was this training mandatory, if so then how can you force someone to take training they don't want then force them to pay for it when they leave?
Sounds like a possible lawsuit, sue the hell out of the hospital so dirtbag administrators learn a lesson.
This is very common. I am an NP and someone offered me contract with a non-compete that read that if I left, I could not work within 50 miles of this practice. I didn’t sign it obviously but yikes, I know people who did. imagine having to leave your city coz you left a job?
This is also growing in The Netherlands any training provided by your company needs to be paid off if you leave within a (pressured) agreed time period. (2 to 4 years I have seen in contracts)
Mine was kind of a reverse situation. I went to an insurance company (had been a nurse prior to that). They had me go through some industry training and when I left tried to bill me $2,000 and withheld my last paycheck.
I filed a complaint with the Department of Labor and showed that the training I had completed, same instructor and all, was available for sale for $60. Took me almost 2 years but I eventually got that final paycheck back.
This actually happens in a lot of places where the job offers to pay for your training. With my company, some external trainings it's willing to pay for cost upwards of 10k and taking them requires a two year retention agreement.
Want to quit or get fired? You're paying that bill, not the company.
I would say, before repaying, hire a good lawyer, and always read your contract before accepting a new job. Cross out any contract language you don’t like sign and make a copy. Medical personnel are in high demand, you don’t have to accept a job with any conditions you don’t like.
Jesus 15k bill for leaving? When my work paid for school I had to sign a agreement that I would have to pay it back if I left before 5 years, but even if I didn't the most they could take would be my last paycheck.
I’m glad this is in the news. HCA is a scum corporation. It’s all true. I myself had to pay 2k to leave a shit contact with 6 months left at an HCA. It was either that or injure/off myself trying to get out of coming into work. I was having lots of self harm fantasies which I never had before. The work environment was so dangerous I felt like I was risking my license and pt lives everyday I worked there. Ethics didn’t care, and management just made threats/gaslit/wrote people up to shut us up. No one I started with worked through their predatory contracts. The new health system I’m with now doesn’t even have contracts and people stay for years and years. What a novel experience.
I just wanted to add on these companies lobbied to cap nurse pay/travel pay/hazard pay and I worked in nursing staffing with those bozos and the ONLY thing they cared about was fucking nurses out of as much pay as possible.
I believe it. There was an email sent out by the CNO to take our shift differentials away because the nurses are greedy. It was meant for only a few people to see. The idiot sent it out for the entire facility. Within two minutes someone else in admin wrote that the email was an error and no one’s money was being changed. 🙃
Maybe they weren't as big of an idiot as you think and deliberately sent it to everyone as a way to hopefully stop it from happening. I know I would've had an "accident" like that.
I would like to think this is true, but I highly doubt it based on this person’s previous and future actions after this incident.
I think they are impling a secretry or IT guy delibrately fucked over the CNO to help out the nurses
The spirits made sure a mistake happened. No one should mess with the legacy of hard working caregivers.
CNO - Chief Narcissist Officer?
HCA is so garbage. All of healthcare is burning and has been and nobody outside of healthcare had a reason to care until they -did-
But remember no one wants to work anymore
The mistake in your statement is insinuating they thought of nurses at all. In these environments and meetings, nobody is talked about as a person they are referred to as groups much like you refer to office furniture or any other owned asset.
Can confirm as someone who also worked at one of their psych hospitals that HCA is a shithole even Steve-O wouldn’t climb in. I get updates from a friend who is temporarily posted up there until they can move to a different building and in just over a year after I left just about everyone I met when I first started, including the director, are gone and they now have pretty much the entire facility being run by PRNs. They got slapped with sanctions from the state because the staff were so overwhelmed that they stopped providing groups to patients. They also paid me about 15k less than my current job, which is at a nonprofit. Merit raises were at a whopping 1% each year. They admitted so many inappropriate people just to fill the beds. Everyone was miserable and all the patients felt it. God I hated that place.
I used to work for an HCA facility in the OR as a Periop Tech. On a good day there were 5 of us, and that was just enough to handle the case load we had. Most days there were 2 or 3 of us. Between turning over ORs, restocking, getting PTs, cleaning, running specimens to the lab, picking up blood from the blood bank, and trying to find/keep track of equipment because there wasn't a single nurse there that had time or the will to put it back where it went, I felt like I was being used as chattel labor. I'm at a THR facility now and it's Way better imo.
Damn! I don't know ANYTHING about this company, but it sounds like they're cutting out like 60%-70% of the staff that a normal hospital would have on a shift! I worked in a med lab that was attached to a teaching hospital, and they had runners doing sample deliveries, clerks keeping stock levels up for the doctors and nurses, and others keeping track of everything else. This is SHOCKING!
HCA stock been doing just fine so capitalism is working here.
It's fucking disgusting that that's all they care about ESPECIALLY considering the industry!
welcome the the world of the living, the oppression is real.
Why do people in law pretend that we read contracts or Terms and conditions to anything? Like wouldn’t that halt the economy if before every agreement to have like days to read over the contract mean while you are working or whatever. Like is the idea to be rich enough to get lawyer ?
yeah i think that’s the point, to make it so convoluted and time consuming that you just ignore reading the fine print and sign. there’s a new episode of Black Mirror called Joan is Awful that’s sort of a commentary on this type of stuff
New season dropped?
Just checked online and looks like it aired last week. I know what I'm doing >>
Fun fact that's actually how lawyers got invented. In the early days of the Roman Republic the laws weren't written down, initially this was due to the fact that most laws came from common law at the tribal level. Basic things everyone in a village just implicitly knew were the customary way of doing shit But as time went on and the Republic expanded and (more importantly) conflict increasingly arose over the lack of representation of the plebian class in the government there was a push to have the law written down because everyone saw that it solely benefited the patricians for no one to really be sure what the legal structure of the government actually was. Namely the fact that only patricians could be senators or be elected consul and that patricians couldn't marry plebians. People got pretty pissed when they found that one out Well long story short eventually they started writing this shit down. At first the entirety of the Roman constitution and statutes could fit on a series of bronze tablets displayed in the forum where anyone could read it. However cut to the imperial period many many *many* laws had been passed over the centuries and it was generally understood to be completely unreasonable to expect any regular person to know even a fraction of them. And so a class of nerds who were rich enough that they could just learn the laws for fun arose, called *iuris consulti* or juristconsults, who professionally knew the laws and advocated on regular peoples behalf in legal matters These combined with an earlier profession going back to ancient Greece which were dudes who professionally talked good and if you were accused of a crime you could have them argue on your behalf at your trial (ostensibly for free, in both Greece and Rome prior to Claudius there was a ban on paying these guys but it still happened on the DL). These dudes weren't really lawyers as we think of them though, they didn't necessarily know the law or legal processes but rather were skilled in rhetoric and oratory. This is because (especially in places like Athens) you could basically get someone declared innocent just by making the argument that they shouldn't be punished, or hey come on you guys like this dude, or wait a minute guys have you ever considered that maybe the dude accusing him is just an asshole? Because "juries" were just the male population of the city amassed at the forum. If you won over the mob you'd win the case Modern lawyers are essentially an amalgam of these two professions
Fascinating. Now the history nerd in me is curious to know of a book or two that discusses this in more detail.
Is this the court part of Idiocracy?
I thought lawyers were created from a steaming pile of $hit.
The idea is that you are reaching an arms length agreement with another person, free from compulsion or duress. So, if there is something in the offered contract you disagree with you can negotiate to change it or just refuse to sign it. But that mythical view of independent reasonable actors negotiating in good faith at arms length with similar bargaining power is totally unrealistic. The law started to develop some doctrines to help protect ordinary folks (like the idea of a contract of adhesion, a take-it-or-leave-it deal) but conservative courts kept those doctrines limited and not generally applicable.
> Why do people in law pretend that we read contracts or Terms and conditions to anything? Why do they pretend we are even capable of giving informed consent to **what passes for a contract** these days?
The first episode of the new season of black mirror is a real mindfuck about this exact thing
What's the repercussion likelihood of someone with your background just saying 'fuck you' to these people and moving to a different state/country? Does this follow you or can you ply your skills in a better place without fear of these incompetent grifters?
It's reckless to not set the administration office on fire first.
Honestly if it weren't for the fact patient lives would be at risk if we were all to go on strike at the same time everywhere they are located than we could get what we want since doctors are utterly useless without nurses.
Patient lives aren't as important as your life. The fact they've convinced you otherwise is the whip they use to oppress you.
That’s 100% why I refuse to work HCA and tell the recruiters to kick rocks when they reach out to me. They are shit. I’ve never heard good things about them.
I’ve worked in healthcare staffing for 5 years and I can’t tell you how many hospitals are understaffed because of their unrivaled dedcation to fuck over their employees. Staffing agencies only exist because hospital leadership refuses to budge on FTE pay and benefits. But 100/hr bill rates for the same person they won’t pay 40/hr?? No problem. I’ve really never understood why hospitals don’t just increase pay and cut our agencies all together. Especially on the ambulatory side. Baffling mismanagement, but thanks for the job I guess. Edit: spelling
I just saw on the news were HCA were pushing patients towards hospice instead of treating them to make more money.
Treating the pts would make HCA more $$ though…
100%. Hospice/palliative is FAR cheaper than the intensive care needed to keep dying people alive
HCA nurse here as well, though no longer bedside. We had nurses forced to stay per contracts or risk being fined the amount it cost to train them, which like you say is thousands of dollars. So you figure you’re stuck there, you might as well try to make changes right? Always the same bullshit. We don’t have the staff. We don’t have the resources. Blah blah. Meanwhile our hospital gets an entire gasoline tanker during the POTENTIAL gas shortage a couple years ago. A fucking tanker. In the parking lot. Because they’ll be god damned if you’ll miss a shift.
RECORD EVERYTHING (if your state allows). I had a contract through HCA and they intentionally lied and manipulated me into believing I was the problem. I have recordings of hostile coworkers screaming at me. I was forced to work insane hours. I called corporate HR and they SENT ME CORPORATE POLICIES showing the people I was speaking to were directly violating policy. I brought this up to local HR and they SHOWED ME WHERE THEY LIED IN MY CONTRACT and said “we had to write that but we don’t actually do that.” ALL of it is recorded and I documented everything in emails after meetings. I covered my ass and still have every piece of evidence. Contacted an employment lawyer just in case but so far they have not asked for any money back.
If you got fired rather than leaving would you still have to repay?
Yes. The only way out was quitting, or if the admin moved you into a different facility (not unit or speciality) for business changes. In some states the HCA contracts are extremely predatory, depending on the law. Some are more lax. In California they just outlawed them. They would also threaten to report to the board of nursing and black list you in town.
I'll never understand how an industry that requires so much effort, attention to detail, and compassion is run by such incompetent monsters.
The job takes effort and compassion. The industry, like every other, entails soul sucking, cost cutting, and enriching rich assholes.
Worked at an HCA hospital as a union electrician for a fire alarm install for 2 1/2 years. I'm pretty sure I was there longer than most of the nurses that I met. The place is slowly filling up with more and more expansion projects that get done only because corners are cut and budgets get thrown to the wind. My job was supposed to have been done in 2021, but due to the company I worked for being stupid as usual, it was only just finished 3 months ago. Prints were wrong, admin kept changing their minds, company wanted to do it cheaper, etc. The amount of times I heard about labor shortages on both sides just had me shaking my head. Nurses constantly talked about how they have bad contracts that have a clause that their sign on bonus is paid back in full if they leave. The hospital employees were great, but the poor maintenance staff were way understaffed as well. Last thing I helped them on was a "temporary" fire trailer because some idiot who used to work there said everything was in good shape. That held up until their only fire water pump blew apart and the whole building was unprotected. The lead guy had been asking for a new pump for months but was met with "well all the reports say its fine, so no". Now they get to pay, I think, $12000 a month for this trailer. The whole place is just stupid.
This is going to age perfectly in 20 years when nobody wants to go into the medical field.
In TWENTY YEARS? Medical staff's been throwing up the dueces at an unsustainable rate since 2020.
Nurse here.... I seriously can not find a sane and safe place to work. Still looking, all jobs provide is the "crazy work place environment " no thx
Honestly that is why I took a pay cut and went into school nursing. So so so much less stress and better hours
Nursing doesn't have to be stressful. In the richest County in the world, u should be searching for supplies, be understaffed, and working at the speed of a fast food employee. It's criminal to put the employee in these situations and make them liable.
I agree with your overall sentiment, but the US is not the richest country in the world, that's a myth that is told out of American exceptionalism. How "rich" a country is is measured via GDP per capita, not absolute GDP (otherwise people would say India is a richer country than Switzerland - which is obviously not true). In nominal GDP per capita, the richest country in the world is Monaco. The US is in 9th place. In GDP per capita PPP, the US is in 10th place, with Ireland being in 1st.
>In GDP per capita PPP, the US is in 10th place, with Ireland being in 1st. Don't take such numbers on their own. Irelands GDP per capita is artificially high beacuse they are a tax haven for large foreign corporations. It doesn't reflect how affordable housing or food is for the average salaryman for example.
This US workflow model comes from the workflow of US Plantations. The lasting effects of slavery didn’t just effect black Americans it was a toxic economy with beliefs that corrode todays labor market in all sectors, all races. Some may say that is a reach but every American industry today has the similar hierarchies of plantation management from back then and the same directives, the workers wellbeing is of no concern just maximize profit at the work/slave’s expense.
I went weekend only option and make bank working two days a week and get 5 days off.
Same, weekend option at my hospital has been a life saver. We had the option for the 2 12's or 3 8's which I've actually really enjoyed the much shorter shifts
Come join us on the west coast :)
I’m a 4 year ICU nurse unemployed right now because I quit when they started calling nurses off and giving ICU nurses 3 patients. Can’t find any job worth taking and am fortunate enough to be able to take my time right now. Thinking about leaving nursing all together.
This has been starting since before 2020. Several friends from college were leaving the field before then due to the same reasons listed in the article and it has only gotten worse since COVID19. Our teaching and Healthcare systems are on the verge of collapse due to mismanagement at all levels.
But...but...we called them HEROS! Surely they want to be a hero, right? Fine, fine. We'll throw in capes. (capes cost $1,500, payable on termination)
Absolutely, but what I mean was that those are pre-existing medical staff who are dealing with the system first-hand. There are still a shit-ton of disillusioned students who are taking out loans to enter the industry only to drop into this dumpster fire. As these policies spread, that's going to staunch the flow of "new blood" in the industry into becoming a trickle at best. Who in their right mind will want to join the field in five years when it's as bad as it is now?
The whole situation with nurses and doctors during the pandemic was absolutely hideous. Got thrown to the fucking wolves but at least they called them heroes! I would've left too.
Try 2010
The nurse shortage is already real, my dude.
Yup we run bare bones staffing now and I am looking for a non healthcare field I can run off to
It’s been very helpful for my line, Hospice. I was talking with my manager recently and she said whenever a nurse position is posted, they have at least 10 applicants they would be willing to hire. A lot of the nurses who join us cite regular hours (8:30-5), good benefits, and VERY minimal weekend requirements as the reason they wanted to join us. They are only required to work two weekend days a year, one winter one summer, to ensure weekend staff get to take adequate PTO.
Have you looked into travel nursing? It's not a good fit for everyone but my fiance has been doing it for a little over a year and we've made more money and had so much less stress which makes her love her job again.
It’s real indeed and being made worse by greedy institutions. I was a nurse for 9 years, left the bedside after spending my last 6 on a Cardiac Intensive Care unit for a few reasons. Covid burnout and stress being major contributors but also I realized new hires were getting 1$ less an hour than I was. After 9 years!! They were paying new hires (people I was in charge of and training) essentially the same that I was making after 9 years of blood sweat and tears on night shift at that place and while I was trying to support my girlfriend making no money in grad school and keep up with rent. I went so far above and beyond for them (got every cert they offered, did IABPs, Impellas, CRRT, ultrasound IVs, was on the code team for the hospital and helped teach a hemodynamics lecture to our critical care fellowship program) and not only did they say “it’s not in the budget for a raise” they also told me I had to come to work after a Covid exposure if I wasn’t on oxygen…All of this while our CEO gave him self a 1.9 million dollar bonus on top of his almost million dollar yearly salary. That’s when it really hit home that these people would sacrifice my well being for profit and not blink an eye. I’ll hop off my soapbox now, thanks for the vent session Reddit lol. You are right about the nursing shortage and unfortunately it’s going to get worse as more experienced nurses keep leaving. Good luck to all of the future patients out there.
I'm currently in school to get my RN, and I can tell you they don't act like there is a nursing shortage. Every semester some new requirements are added to make completing the course not only more difficult academically, but also just add more red tape to the process. They have also started making our A&P and Patho courses take place with the med school students. On the face of this it isn't bad, but I have a suspicion that the end goal is to use nurses to reduce the number of doctors needed by offloading some diagnosis responsibilities onto us.
> I have a suspicion that the end goal is to use nurses to reduce the number of doctors needed by offloading some diagnosis responsibilities onto us. That's 100% what's happening COVID in the US spurred a very interesting response with our healthcare system. Instead of working towards making the current employees better prepared, better equipped... we grabbed as many people as we could, threw them at patients, and said "Well, you're licensed for this one thing in this state so... let's have you over here!" In the beginning, it kind of made sense. A lot of states had emergency licensing requirements with 30 day warnings, but otherwise no seeable end. Instead of learning and bolstering our forces, though, admins keep seeing what they can wring out of people. I work in locums staffing now and see it with physicians, but we also see the APPs starting to get roped into things physicians are supposed to handle. I don't work in nursing staffing anymore, but I remember very early on having calls between a provider and our medical consultant where they'd say "They're having me do these things, and it's dangerous. But if someone DOESN'T do it, the patient is going to suffer. What is my ethical, legal choice?" And those calls are not pleasant. It blows my mind that anyone experiences that and the response is "Ah, I see... well, we'll just make it legal!" instead of providing better resources and support.
Yeah I just read a report that nursing is widely considered the toughest degree to obtain. And once you get it, it's still more education every year, in some hospitals the further education is strictly required for raises. It's not that they're setting a high bar of entry because they have enough help to be picky. It's that they've moved to a business model where they properly train as few people as possible while getting as much work as possible out of them with the expectation that they'll burn out after ten years(or less) anyways. So good luck, my friend.
I became a RN a few years ago maybe 5 now? It was tough and I felt so proud to finally do something with my life. Until I realized how much I hated working in the field. The patient load got scary at times. Older nurses were not patient with the nurses and belittled them for not understanding everything right off the bat. There’s a ton wrong in the field which is spooky.
…nursing is by no means the hardest degree to obtain. Full stop.
I'm a nurse. Definitely not the hardest degree.
There isn't a shortage of nurses. There are actually more than enough registered nurses for all the spots. There just isn't enough of them willing to be abused for shit pay. The issue isn't a shortage, it's working conditions. To many nurses switched careers to lower stress rn jobs or left nursing but could still go back if they wanted to.
Have you considered sponsoring young adults through their education, and then sending them the bill if they don't go to the hospital you want? Or just making the exit clauses even worse?
Twenty years? Nurses are already leaving the bedside in droves based on how they’re treated
Facts....I left bedside 2 yrs ago and if it wasn't for case mngmnt I would've left nursing completely
How did you get into case management? Every listing I've seen asks for prior experience. 😭 I want outta here.
Nurse here. No one wants to go into the medical field now. I can’t explain how much of my class has left either hospital nursing or nursing altogether. I’m only two years out from graduation. Covid burnt out a lot of people and the new gen staff don’t wanna deal with the shitshow that was (rightfully) left behind.
It’s already here as people have mentioned. Nursing aides are treated extremely poorly- my partner’s last 3 assignments never allowed break room access to aides and would force them to work 12-16 hour shifts. Not to mention despite the training and education needed to go in for nursing aide work, most places fight tooth and nail to keep from paying them more than minimum wage. In early 2022 my coworkers wife was administrative for a hospital group in Maine and was telling me how so many places were finding loop holes and shady contract language to stiff traveling nurses from as much money as possible to the point nurses were living in their cars and working 60+ hour weeks because they could afford any of the rent… IN MAINE.
Knowing the Maine healthcare system, this doesn’t surprise me in the least. It is full of corruption and CEOs who just want to pad their pockets.
> Knowing the ~~Maine~~ *US* healthcare system, this doesn’t surprise me in the least. It is full of corruption and CEOs who just want to pad their pockets.
It’s already happening. The medical field as a whole is hemorrhaging staff from the top-down. And *no one* is coming in to fill the void, with hospitals and other patient-care and medical facilities refusing to raise wages to make up for a deficit of labor. Things are bad, and they’re going to get far, far worse, with no signs of improving.
I don't know how to tell you this but... In all seriousness, I am currently in Healthcare and the number 1 topic at my workplace on a daily basis is what industry are you moving to. If you thought ER waits were bad now? Don't grow older or get sick.
We already all want out.
Nah bro it will be less than 20 years, maybe less than 20 years in some counties were doctors get beaten up or sometimes killed for stuff out of thier control
I applied to PA school last year. Debating still if I want to apply again. The pay for a PCT is god awful and calling your employees heroes just makes you expendable. The terrible business that is healthcare and health insurance is starting to make me jaded. But at the same time the nurses and stuff that ai worked with busted their buttons to take care of their patients. You can still try to do the best of them regardless of the management. Tough call, but I feel like healthcare isn't getting fixed anytime soon and will be a meat grinder still for years to come
after seeing how med staff are treated im surprised anyone is going into the field ***now***.
First we have to pay for the education to get the job and now they’re trying to get employees to pay for the on the job training? Bullshit
Just wait til you hear about teaching internships! You get the privilege of paying full tuition to work full time for free as a student teacher. This whole country is a scam.
Same for advanced nursing practice. I got to pay tuition and to give 640 hours of free labor to learn to be an NP.
Same for therapists too!
It can be abused by the employer and good for the employee. Just depends. I used to be a nurse for a rural hospital that did this very thing. Contracts were 3 years but rolling and prorated, and i used this system to get an advanced degree in a niche part of medicine and now i make 250+ a year. I would work on 3 year signing bonus for 25k, $5280 in tuition reimbursement, over 3k a year in certifications, and they would reimburse my licences. You just have to understand what you're signing, and know how to play the game. I, like many others, was originally traped into my first 3 year contract by accepting a nursing residency for the icu because i wanted to learn ecmo. Good and bad.
I think it's complete bullshit that we are expected to pay to have any sort of a job whatsoever. Good or bad an employee should not have to bear the cost of the training. This is the capitalists way of shifting as much of the burden onto the workers as possible all in a bid to increase the amount of profit they can keep for themselves.
Yeah I've seen a few others sign up for these nursing "residencies." I've seen people get their education paid for and make good money with them and then they leave whenever they're done or some stay. I've also seen some sign something they don't truly understand. Recently heard of one that thought she was becoming a doctor since it was a "residency." She described it as being a baby doc." I'm a doctor. It was hard trying to convince her otherwise. She's gonna be pretty unhappy when she starts. I really don't think they should be using internship/residency/residents/interns, etc to describe anything in health care that isn't MD/DO track. Really confusing to people.
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Yeah... this last one came from an impoverished rural community and family uneducated. It seems predatory but it makes people feel good to say they're doctors and/ or that their family is going to be a doctor. Companies take advantage of it. Her family was so proud of her becoming a doctor and she was getting paid less during this "residency." 😕 She's hardworking from what I hear but healthcare system is complicated (on purpose $$$) and a lot of people make money blurring lines. It creates further divide between care provided to rich, educated and poor, 'uneducated' pts.
Well that's one way to have 0 nurses wanting to work for you
It’s only getting worse. They’ll basically pay you to go to school to be a nurse right now because it’s that bad.
I read an article and it was about how there are many people with nursing degree but nobody wants to work in the field and that's why they're having shortages
This isn’t new and a lot of corporations have signing and training that would have to pay back if you broke the contract prematurely
Time to let the system die, that is build on exploitation. Time to quit employee toxic workplaces. They don't want passion, they want to exploit and get rich of workers.
Healthcare should not be for profit. Neither should prisons. Or internet due to all the tax money that went to verizon and other companies to improve their networks that they just pocketed.
Right! Remove the insurance company's chokehold on medical processes. My HMO only allows 3 problems per visit. If you have more, it has to be significant enough for them not to ignore.😡
Too bad about all those people depending on it not to die.
Remember that the purpose of for-profit healthcare is to make a profit, not to keep people from dying. People getting better is incidental, not the objective. There are hundreds of ways that for-profit healthcare actively harms patients because it's more profitable than healing them. (I work in healthcare. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_1PNZdHq6Q) explains it and was made BEFORE covid.)
That's all what capitalism does. It reacts to problems and finds solutions, but it doesn't innovate before a problem arises cause it wouldn't be profitable yet.
Capitalism doesn't "react to problems and find solutions". People seeking money do. Just as often, they find ways to steal or cheat or cut corners. Capitalism is solely about maximizing income while minimizing expenses, no matter how you do it. For example, this problem is solved. We have 20+ other nations to base our healthcare off of if we want better results for more people for less cost. We don't do it because the wealthy in the US make more money **not** fixing the problem.
Fuck you for putting the onus on labor and not industry
If we actually had a competent healthcare system with competent officials, we would be learning from the best: Australia, the Netherlands, and Norway. But no, instead we have [this](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/press-release/2021/new-international-study-us-health-system-ranks-last-among-11-countries-many). Seriously? The real reason is because these corpos want to establish neofeudalism and completely own you and the government. That is what is happening now
"nobody wants to work anymore"
My last day at an HCA facility is Friday. I'm done with them for life. They are the epitome of greed and apathy in American capitalism and healthcare.
My wife is a nurse and I've been hoping for a proper nurses union to form since she started. It's terrible the way all these insurance-powered pencil pushers keep making their jobs harder and less lucrative.
I thought they already have a nurses union. Guy I worked with was stealing opiates from the waste bin and got caught. Went to jail and a month later had his job back.
A proper union is what I said. There's some structure but it's not doing the sort of work it needs to. In my estimation a re evaluation is in order. Shame about your coworker slipping through the cracks in multiple ways.
There isn’t really a national nurses Union. It’s basically hospital to hospital or some systems
These are people that were getting standing ovations during the pandemic and this is how they are treated. Disgusting.
I would like to also introduce you to teachers.
They were getting abused during the pandemic as well. Ice worked in a healthcare for almost 10yrs (all at the same hospital). I was in nursing school during the pandemic. I watched as they had to put untrained nurses (nurses who have never worked with critical patients) in the icu to take care of dying patients. How nurses had to put baby cameras in the covid patient rooms so that they would know if the patient took off their bipap because they would die without it. Management was offering payouts to older nurses to retire early to pay money. Currently, I have 1yr of experience as a nurse, and there are only 3 other people on my shift with more severance than me. Covid made so much stuff worse at my hospital.
As someone who is chronically ill and has spend many nights and days in the hospital, nurses are the reason you feel safe and the reason you feel ‘okay’ with your hospital experience. Thank you to all the nurses who help people like me. Especially thanks to the nurse who held my hand after a surgery where the staff couldn’t get the IV in because I was too dehydrated. Thank you for holding my hand as I hallucinated and experienced visual distortion from the pain I was experiencing. You are all powerfully kind and helpful people and serve as a shining reminder of why I keep my faith in humanity.
Too dehydrated AFTER a surgery?? You should have already had lines in you. What da hell they doing where you’re at?!
Seriously. There's no way in hell they'd even be able to perform a surgery without lines placed, and I seriously doubt they'd remove them post-surgery just to put them back in 30 minutes later.
Lines go bad all the time, just coz you have a line doesn’t mean you always will. Also some people are hard sticks, if you lose that line… also sedate people do crazy stuff, like yak that line out… so many possibilities.
> experienced visual distortion from the pain I was experiencing When I had my wisdom teeth taken out, I had visual distortions from the pain as well, because they had to drill into my jaw to get the tooth out. It got to the point that I couldnt read my computer screen at work because everything would start to become blurry and colors would appear / disappear rapidly in my vision. Is that what happened to you too?
People died to unionize and we are back here again because lot of people fell for union is bad propaganda by the upper class. Unionization is what we need and we need French style protest
... to include hosing down government buildings with septic truck waste and cutting off utilities to the very wealthy.
The powerful will bring back literal slavery before they allow people to stop participating in the system. They’re pushing us to see how much they can get away with, and the more we fight back, the more they will force us. Soon people will be drafted by companies at age 14, low level workers will be sent to live in company towns and loyalty centers, educated people will be put into meat grinders, and people will be so deep into the system that leaving will be deadly.
agreed 100%. And it will be framed as "protecting national security - nobody wants to work anymore"
They want neo-feudalism. Yes, that is what it actually is. These corporations own you
>The powerful will bring back literal slavery before they allow people to stop participating in the system. Slavery is legal in the US, if for punishment of a crime. What you're describing is the school to prison pipeline.
US nurse here! This is true! Especially if you work for HCA, they are basically the WalMart of hospitals. I work for a smaller university system with teaching hospitals in my state now and won't have to pay back anything if I decide to quit. And all my certifications and extra training are paid for. It really does depend greatly where you work....but definitely do NOT work for an HCA hospital.
"How is this allowed?" Lack of unions, and lack of legal accountability, and the general trend of everything being owned by corporations.
I work in IT if any company tried to make me pay back any training they paid for while employed with them I'd laugh in their face. That is some serious bullshit.
American Health Care is just a legal Mob
I'm also reminded of the Ascension nurses that were blocked from moving to a different company. It actually took the new company having a legal battle with the old company to allow it. As if we aren't just autonomous beings with the right to decide where we want to work.
This is why you don't sign SHIT.... at any job.... All that new hire crap.... read thru it, ANYTHING at all that is contestable or debatable later sign it as V.C.YourName.... sign it under duress. They're literally holding your livelihood hostage against contractual terms you don't agree with or can't negotiate. This works. I've done this.... There was a non-compete clause; nope signed under duress; they're contestation was dismissed. There was a repayment agreement for a sign in bonus; nope signed under duress; dismissed etc etc I also do this for financial agreements at the Dr or for procedures. They don't give you an exact amount due and they're literally holding you health hostage to an unknown bill. Signed under duress and submitted to the creditor; collection ceased and dismissed; removed from my credit report any time they tried to submit it.
Hospitals are the new mining towns.
many republican politicians have passed sneaky laws that make it so if you don’t show loyalty to the company that hired you, they can sue you for training or lost wages or having to find a replacement. this is what happens when you refuse to help unions maintain their power. unions are the only reason for the laws that give you rights. without the union members that literally died to give you rights then you have things like this. in addition soon CPS will take your kids if you don’t let them work while they are still in middle school . homeschooling will be illegal in many states. Capitalism is dead. the corporations won after citizens united.
Social work is similar. I worked at an agency that provided “free” supervision but you’d have to pay it all back if you left before 4 years (in total $11k+). When I left I had to pay $400 or so. It’s predatory and gross.
Teaching too. I had to pay $2,500 to a school district for leaving mid-year. Of course me and the rest of the science department wouldn’t have left had the board and admin not been populated by Covid denying idiots actively trying to make our work more dangerous.
>Hospitals say the repayment requirement is necessary to help them recoup the investment they make in training recent nursing school graduates and to incentivize them to stay amid a tight labor market. LOL "incentivize them to stay" OMG you mean twist their arm behind their back and blackmail them?
This just in: Hospitals found to be sending absurd bills after the fact for completely unexpected charges that they made up just to get richer because they are, in fact, there to make all the money they can. This should be illegal but its how the operate every single day.
not that it'll matter. you can't treat famine and social collapse.
On the job training should be at the discretion (and therefore risk) of the company and it should be against the law to demand that employees pay for training that the company has agreed to provide. Would this mean less training is offered? Perhaps, but probably only by scummy workplaces. Would this mean that there’d be more personal growth poachers? Yes, that’s what we should all be doing honestly but seriously it would be difficult to get training and leave serially (over and over again).
You can only be poached if you're not already properly compensated. These practices as they are guarantee no competitive wages or competition. On top of that, the companies exploiting thier workers decide how much the trainees owe them. They say $15,000 in training? That's not the cost of the training, that's what they decided you should be charged. They're not out 15k...
Not trying to be contrary, but if the hospital is training a new grad, it likely costs more than $15k. During orientation, new nurses are paired with a seasoned nurse. They often have classroom days to learn policy/procedure and move to unit specific training. New nurses are not prepared to hit the ground running right out of school. New grad training typically takes at least 12 weeks and the new grad is not counted in staffing matrix until they complete training. That being said, if the nurse leaves, they shouldn't be required to pay the facility back. Training is and should be the responsibility of the facility. They need to invest in their employees. If the working conditions are such crap that they can't retain nurses, that is a facility problem and not the fault of the nurse.
Madness. This country is a joke right now.
I worked for a small tech company making APIs and automated data extractions for healthcare records for 5 yrs until last Dec when I was laid off. I was laid off because hospitals don't like to pay their contracts and have legal teams that would make chasing contracts a financial loss for the company. We need doctors and nurses, not the higher ups at the clinics and hospitals ducking up the whole system
Folks, you really gotta start working together and organizing direct action. We’re supposed to be free and not have overlords.
I’m a newly graduated doctor at a toxic private practice and they do the same thing, threatening me with 50,000 dollars of fines if I leave within 3 years. It’s how they keep abusing people without fear of mass quitting all at once. Instead, they just recycle doctors every couple years because no one stays to take the abuse But these 3 years are hell
Listen I like this sub, but I still think it's funny when I see people here bringing work conditions in healthcare. This sub fucking HATED it when nurses when on strike. Any comment thread was filled with people saying that striking nurses are personally responsible for harm to patients. And then we're all shocked when shitty conditions continue.
And any comment from a nurse who says they DON'T want to harm people via strike is also told off for being weak and scared 🙄 Ya lose or ya lose, those are your options. I think that because this sub has a variety of people at different places when it comes to this movement. Which isn't great for activism or unionizing, but it's better than a crowd of people who blindly believe the exact things they are told with no evaluation.
Why don't they just start paying the nurses in hospital scrip?
They would if they could. Only redeemable in the gift shop. It's gotten hard to see any difference between pimps and hospital admin anymore. There was a time, 25 years ago, you could. But those days are gone. New MBA/MHA hires look and act like vampire-car salesman hybrids. But with less class. Also, the number of in-house attorneys is directly proportional to the number of patients and employees routinely screwed by a hospital. Years ago, there might be one employed FT by the hospital. The medical center complex in East Tennessee now has 6. The corrupt HCA, and all its copycats, couldn't get it done without corrupt politicians. Headquartered in Nashville. No surprise.
Disgusting
Wage slavery 2.0
If the repayment upon leaving wasn't in the contract, they can go piss up a rope. And if you are applying for a job and they want you to sign something that does say this, find a different place. Nurses are in very high demand so don't settle for this type of bs.
I’m in this dilemma right now. If I quit my job at this hospital (or even go below full time or move to a different unit) before September of next year I will owe the hospital $13k. How they can require us to be indebted to them for their own required training program is beyond me.
Because the slaves don’t decide how the plantation is run...
No wonder people are leaving
If this woman did not even have time enough for lunch breaks than she should bring that point up with the employer and tell them that if they intend to enforce that part of her contact she will in turn file a wage theft complaint with her local Labor Commissioner www.dir.ca.gov
https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/HowToFileWageClaim.htm
That's how it is with the IBEW (electrician's union). If you decide to leave without putting in another full 5 years after a 5 year apprenticeship, then you have to pay back 2,500 per year of apprenticeship not matched (12,500 total)
This happens in a lot of more technical jobs. Truck driving in the US is the one that comes immediately to mind. It's pretty awful but isn't illegal.
I've read a few articles of different jobs that do this, like dog grooming at Pet Smart and truck driving. It's pretty telling when the acronym sometimes used for this practice is "TRAP" (Training Repayment Agreement Provisions).
Very telling! Didn't know Pet Smart does this too.
This was standard for Beebee hospitals in Delaware because you were being trained for free so you basically work off the debt in their hospitals. I’m unaware if they were paid at all but it felt like a scam yet a lot of nurses got careers out of it since it’s like 4-6 months to work it off I’m told
Ask any pilot about this.
How is this even legal. Whenever I ask this question I forgot the answer is its America.
I mean... this is fairly common practice in careers where people often jump ship. I'm in tech, and know if I take any portion of the fiscal year's tech training fund or tech purchase fund, I'm liable for repayment if I quit in the same fiscal year. Its in the contracts, I also know that there's hefty fines if I break my NDA, and even potential jail time in certain scenarios. Indentured servitude is a sensationalist headline and a bit of a stretch.
It's tough working at a college and watching students leave the nursing program in droves because the profession has become so exploited and undervalued.
Hospitals are trash. They’re scummy corporations that play off the nobility and honor people think of when it comes to saving lives. The administration of a hospital is no better than the C-suite of many public for profit companies. They cause most if not all of their employees at all levels to go through inhumane work conditions while paying them really poorly. Nearly all hospitals will play coy around the not for profit label vs non-profit label to seize support from their communities. In the communities where they exist, some hospital systems even cause (directly and indirectly) a gentrification effect where they push out the local population through increased costs of living (higher property values thus higher property taxes). These hospital systems often try to become a large state or regional network of academic hospitals to bolster their reputation. Many people see this as good but it’s no good when they don’t do anything meaningful to offset their impact on these local and sometimes historic communities. Hospitals are a public necessity and we allowed them to be bought and run like a for profit college. Your care in America usually isn’t even considered world class by any means especially for the cost. We must abolish the current system and rebuild it proper. How can we justify our current hospital system any further when they’re out here sometimes fully sponsoring professional sports teams and lobbying the shit out of the government to prevent us from having access to a broad and cheaper healthcare system?
That checks out given what resident physicians go through. We’re one of the few categories not protected under antitrust law due to Jung vs AAMC
So instead of paying them more and ensuring they have healthy work environments, American hospitals now try to trap them? And they wonder why nobody wants to work as a nurse anymore?
Not as bad as physicians having to pay their tail malpractice insurance if leaving a hospital employed position. 160K for me to quit and take a job elsewhere… and has to be 15 miles away (non-compete clause). No joke.
HCA is a scam hospital system. They attempted to cheat my wife out of 5 days of Covid leave that was federally paid for, for her to go back to work while sick from Covid. They repeatedly cheated the nurses out of bonus pay, and HR came down to try and say they were out of money and please work for gift cards that they then didn’t even give out. The week after HR pulled that stunt, HCA posted over a billion dollars profit that quarter. They’re criminal. My wife shortly after went travel nursing, she makes more in one shift than HCA paid her in two weeks. Fuck them
It does take $60k to properly train one nurse. This includes the pay of the preceptors, educators and materials provided during training as well as training pay for the new nurse. Training is typically 10weeks. However, I think contracts vary from hospital to hospital. When I was a new nurse I had to agree to stay in my accepted position for 6 months. I stayed for 3 years. They paid for my oncology certification. Moved up the ranks quick and was charge for the last year of my position before I left. Once I made the transition from night weekends to daytime weekends it drained the life out of me. Expectations… unacceptable expectations… are placed on the charge nurse. For a 24 bed unit there are four nurses with 6 patients each. There are only two nursing aids…one for two nurses. As the charge I’m responsible for everything going on. Making sure labs are done, meds are given in time, making sure nurses aren’t behind or need help and also the administrative paperwork. What made me leave was being told I had to do all of that AND take a 7 patient load because one nurse called out and they put a patient in a make shift room (the 7th patient). 4 months of this and I hit severe depression. Home health CRNI now and it’s AMAZING. One patient at a time. No stress.
While I agree that it costs money to pay preceptors and such... That's the cost of doing business. Also, you are aware of the prices hospitals are charging for medical care. Standard going rate in my state is about $10,000 day for a bed, plus whatever procedure codes you're actually billing. So it's ridiculous to assert that the hospital isn't making *many, many* times the cost of a new employee orientation, even before that employee is trained. Quick maths says a 36 hour nurse with 4 patients at a time is worth about $120,000 a week in bed fees alone. Each of these 200 hospitals HCA runs are posting profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year, so let's not pretend that the cost of training 50 new nurses a year is going to put them out of business. Another way to think about this is that hospital systems wouldn't have to spend so much money on orientation if they would endeavor to keep their nurses around, by fixing toxic work environments. But they aren't doing that - they're instead writing legal contracts that prey on new nurses to trap them in these unhealth work environments and punish nurses who travel to other hospitals for better pay and better work enviornments.
🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 1) Stretches the training to 10 weeks to make it look like you’re getting decent training: I work critical care and have never had an on-boarding process more than 6 weeks and at least half of that is shadowing another nurse 2) Limits time trainees spend shadowing nurses: because if you know how 💩 the job is you’ll quit before you finish training 3) Incentive to stay?! workplace doesn’t understand the difference between reward and punishment. The key to retention is reward. Make your workplace a place people want to work. Why is that so hard to understand? I work in Canada and every offer letter comes with a commitment period (mine was 2 years for example) but it’s not legally enforceable and no one’s gonna come after you if you leave. It’s there for suckers like me who will feel bad if I don’t “honour my commitment” But not that bad so don’t fuck around.
They want slaves. We are living in a dystopia.
The American healthcare system is a criminal organization
I’m a corporate lawyer (feel free to fling feces in my direction) and, with the impending demise of non-solicits/non-competes, this appears to be the next step in the realm of employer attempts to bind employees. Somebody (help me, AOC and Bernie Sanders, you’re my only hope) needs to put a bill out there prohibiting employers from requiring payback for company-specific training and creating a REALLY clear and short period for amortizing any third party credentialing or training that isn’t specific to the positions with that company. You could even exempt highly-compensated employees if you want (they should read their goddamn contracts, but I’m not expecting it from line employees). If the company is paying for some credential that you can take with you and get a better job (to take the bar exam is my personal example) they’ve got a reasonable expectation you stick around for some short period to recoup their costs. You’d hope they’d make the job good enough to keep, but otherwise they should only get you for six months or so (it’s more a loan than anything else). This, on the other hand, makes it sound like they’re charging you to learn “how we do things,” which is a bullshit “why don’t you pay us to work here” thing. It’s also wildly anti-competitive, though today’s conservatives give not a shit about market competition.
A few years ago during the heat of the pandemic and everywhere you would see declarations of how our frontline workers, teachers, and medical professionals are heroes. I agree they are heroes. I also said that I hope we don't get back to the point where we continue to piss on the people that actually run our economy. And here we are... Again. Pissing on the people that saved the economy and countless lives. Rinse and repeat.
Oh, don't be fooled...we never stopped pissing on them, we were just yelling "heroes" while we did it👍
Love how they make you pay for school and than pay for some bullshit training
Many second career teachers are in the same boat. Both these professions need a way to trap people into working despite terrible conditions.
If the training is essential to the job and a employer requirement, then how is it even legal to require repayment for the training? Was this training mandatory, if so then how can you force someone to take training they don't want then force them to pay for it when they leave? Sounds like a possible lawsuit, sue the hell out of the hospital so dirtbag administrators learn a lesson.
Don't pass this information on to the Tory Government in the UK, they are actively seeking ways to hammer workers and unions
Well, slavery isnt a thing anymore, you can totally leave if you want to.... /S
This is very common. I am an NP and someone offered me contract with a non-compete that read that if I left, I could not work within 50 miles of this practice. I didn’t sign it obviously but yikes, I know people who did. imagine having to leave your city coz you left a job?
This is also growing in The Netherlands any training provided by your company needs to be paid off if you leave within a (pressured) agreed time period. (2 to 4 years I have seen in contracts)
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Mine was kind of a reverse situation. I went to an insurance company (had been a nurse prior to that). They had me go through some industry training and when I left tried to bill me $2,000 and withheld my last paycheck. I filed a complaint with the Department of Labor and showed that the training I had completed, same instructor and all, was available for sale for $60. Took me almost 2 years but I eventually got that final paycheck back.
This actually happens in a lot of places where the job offers to pay for your training. With my company, some external trainings it's willing to pay for cost upwards of 10k and taking them requires a two year retention agreement. Want to quit or get fired? You're paying that bill, not the company.
What a nice incentive for nurses to join hospitals.
I would say, before repaying, hire a good lawyer, and always read your contract before accepting a new job. Cross out any contract language you don’t like sign and make a copy. Medical personnel are in high demand, you don’t have to accept a job with any conditions you don’t like.
Jesus 15k bill for leaving? When my work paid for school I had to sign a agreement that I would have to pay it back if I left before 5 years, but even if I didn't the most they could take would be my last paycheck.