IS HEALTH CARE GOING AFTER ITS SENIOR WORKERS?
Anecdotal evidence indicates a trend of laying off or demoting nurses with years of experience -- and the bigger paychecks to go along with it. But many healthcare experts say that if indeed it has been happening, and many say it has, the rate is slowing because hospital downsizing is stabilizing.
As jobs within acute care settings are redefined, some say older staffers may end up leaving because they are less flexible, according to Susan Odegaard Turner, MN, MBA, RN, a healthcare consultant in California who specializes in nursing transition issues. “The people you tend to hear about are often the people who do not feel or believe they have other options,” said Turner, who knows what she’s talking about. She was “downsized” three times.
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Since 1994, the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has received about 1,000 complaints of age discrimination in healthcare settings a year, up from 500 in 1989.
Even though there are no hard numbers for complaints filed by nurses, the American Nurses Association says there is no doubt that hospitals are cutting back on nursing staff and replacing them with unlicensed assistive personnel, said Sara Foer, an ANA spokesperson.
Older nurses are “absolutely targeted,” said Kay McVay, RN, vice president of the California Nurses Association. “Even physicians are beginning to suffer. Those who have been around for a long time are being squeezed out. Their idea of giving patient care is different than what the consultants are demanding.”
The fear that may be spreading among older workers--those with at least 20 years of experience--has shown up in the plot of “ER,” NBC’s popular TV series. And in real life, according to McVay, the CNA is seeing more older nurses being let go for seemingly minor infractions.
But Deloras Jones, MS, RN, director of regional nursing for Kaiser Permanente Medical Program, California Division, said Kaiser is worried about losing senior people because of the impact on the quality of care. She denied senior people were being targeted, and said Kaiser lost a large number of experienced workers because they take voluntary buyouts, then get another job “at the hospital down the street.”
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Judith Shindul-Rothschild, RN, PhD, an assistant professor at Boston College, said statistics show the number of nurses remaining in the profession has dropped during the past decade. In a survey of 7,500 nurses across the nation, 76 percent said they were likely to remain in nursing, down almost 20 percent since the 1980s, she said.
These nurses reported being more worried about the stress involved in keeping their jobs than about losing them. The story is not quite the same in every part of the country. Shindul-Rothschild’s survey, published in the November issue of the American Journal of Nursing, showed that nurses in the West/South Central regions reported the smallest declines in the number of RNs, compared to nurses in the Northeast and East/North Central regions, who reported the highest job losses.
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When a local hospital merged with a larger system in Corpus Christi, Texas, about 100 jobs were lost. Some senior administrators and nurse educators lost their jobs, but most RNs were moved into other positions, said Rebecca Jones, PhD, RN, director of nursing, department of nursing and health sciences, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. The school’s nursing grads have no trouble finding jobs--75 percent of them are placed before graduation.
But are her grads taking the place of older workers? Some say yes, given that the national average salary for a nursing school grad is $35,000, while senior nurses can make double that. But others say no, the job market for new grads is opening up because of developing nursing shortage.
