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Editor's
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"Pay, stress force nurses out, they say." "Nurses’ shortage hits hard." These particular headlines are from the Tucson Citizen, but similar stories that document the growing effects of the nursing shortage are being reported in the news media from coast to coast. While we celebrate and give recognition to the hard and stressful work of nurses, the unfortunate truth is that salaries simply have not kept up with the increasing cost of living. Money isn’t the only factor driving the shortage, of course, but it ranks at or near the top of anyone’s list of concerns. Unless nurses are paid what the job is worth, we will continue to see well-qualified, experienced nurses leaving for more lucrative careers. The good news is that nurses aren’t alone in recognizing the importance of money. Industry groups such as the American Hospital Association acknowledge the need to improve compensation to attract and retain talented nurses. In state after state, nurses and their employers are coming together in search of ways to improve the work environment and attract new blood into the profession. Despite these efforts, many nurses still suffer pay inequity and discrimination, largely because nursing has been and remains a female-dominated profession. Women’s groups and nursing organizations have fought with mixed results for comparable worth at the state and federal levels for the past two decades. Some nurses leave the United States to work in countries like Saudi Arabia because they have tax-free income and little or no cost of living expense. All housing, utilities, maintenance, furnishings and daily living needs are provided, plus two months of paid time off. Of course, working in a male-dominated culture that places many restrictions on women has its negative aspects. Another factor in the nursing crisis is the increasing shortage of nurse faculty in schools of nursing as they retire. Most nursing faculty who have advanced degree preparation also are underpaid compared to other university faculties, where there is a male dominance. Women are compensated far below their male counterparts and hold fewer positions of leadership, even in medical schools. The University of Arizona, for example, has no female department heads in the medical school, and women faculty members average $13,000 per year less than their male colleagues. Some nurses do earn more than $60,000 per year as staff nurses, but they work overtime, nights and holidays, and even have taken other jobs through temporary agencies in addition to their regular full-time job. These nurses are burning out. We can improve the environment for practice. We can work on improving the public image of nursing. We can change the delivery models again and again as managed care and the redesign of systems have done. We can improve education and develop more innovative upward mobility programs for nurses and other health care personnel. We also can try, once more, to make sure nurses are valued and used for clinical decision-making nursing practice. But if nurses are not paid what they are worth—accepting the responsibility of life and death and working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, not with great pay, and often with little respect from patients and others in the work setting—then it is no wonder that nurses are running away from nursing. One step individual nurses can take is to rally behind legislation that would change reimbursement practices under Medicare and other programs so that the health care system revenue might better support higher salaries for nurses. Nurses need to join with industry groups in persuading lawmakers to make needed changes. Whatever it takes, in the end nurses must be rewarded economically. Nurses are the heart and soul of health care and it is time they are compensated accordingly.
What
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NEWS
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