North Memorial Health Care in Robbinsdale announced that it will either cut the hours or the positions of 170 people. The news comes a few weeks after Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) and Park Nicollet Health Services announced layoffs. Since the recession started, Minnesota has cut 2,000 health care jobs.
And while institutions who are doing the cutting want to avoid the front-line workers, such as nurses, they are being nicked too. Park Nicollet cut 26 licensed practical nurses. HCMC has left nursing jobs unfilled and may be cutting some in this latest round. The Minnesota Nurses Association says that 100 of its members have lost jobs in 2009.
The layoffs are discouraging news to the 120 graduates from the University of Minnesota’s School of Nursing. They grabbed their sheepskin on Friday. But only 25 of them have a job lined up. Last year, all of the 130 or so graduates had jobs waiting for them when they graduated, said Connie Delaney, the UofM Nursing School dean.
Not long ago, hospitals were fighting over qualified graduates, offering hefty signing bonuses and other incentives to graduates. Now students face competition for jobs, said Mary Rothchild of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, whose graduates account for about 80 percent of the new nursing pool in the state. In addition, many graduates thought it would be no problem to get into prized areas such as pediatric or surgical care, she said. But that's no longer the case.
This reality seems to conflict with the conventional wisdom that nursing, and other health care-related fields, are a safe-haven in a recession.
Well, yes and no.
In the short-term there is a noticeable drop in job vacancies for nursing positions, according to state figures. But state labor experts say the demand for nurses still beats that of most any other profession.
And, in the long-term, the need for more nurses will be great. Delaney says the explosion of medical need for baby boomers coupled with the advanced age of licensed nurses in Minnesota still means there will be a coming crisis in meeting the nursing demand in the future.
And she doesn't back off from the word - crisis.
So what should nursing applicants do? Delaney and Rothchild say applicants should be flexible – take jobs in nursing home environments or in geriatrics. They should consider information health technology or be willing to move to other parts of the country to land positions.
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Comments: 15
The nurse is the work horse of the medical industry and without them a doctor has to do his/her own work for the money received.
For the record, I am a nurse with 30 years experience in Geriatrics, and have been laid off since January when I was "downsized", due to budget cutbacks. I am a "Clinical Reimbursement Specialist" who is unable to do "grunt work" any longer. thus, I wait for a CRS position to open up, and they are few and far between.
The cuts are occurring all over, and I see a cutback in the Geriatric care staffing as well, due to the fact that our Governor just increased the bed tax on Medicaid beds in long term care, making a tough situation even tougher, especially for the patients.
I've heard of all sorts of flex-time available for nurses in the area.
As always, money concerns are more important than actual health care.
Health care costs more and more, yet they don't have the money to pay nurses. What is wrong with this picture? Where is all of our money going?
Just think, when government healthcare comes, providers will really have the screws put to them meaning less pay for nurses and doctors. Eventually, fewer qualified people will want to go into this profession
To hear the University of Minnesota's School of Nursing dean on MPR's Morning Edition, copy and paste this link
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/05/22/nursing/
Nurses are always needed. Hospitals have been using pool nurses from agencies to avoid paying benefits and overtime, for many years. Ironically, this practice increases the number of malpractice suits because pool nursing does not provide continuity of care for patients and there is so much more opportunity for errors - serious and fatal errors. Cutting back on the number of nurses is going to have a negative impact on patients and on health care facilities.
I was in ICU and therapy for 10 weeks in 2001... the nurses and therapists were ESSENTIAL. I would spend maybe ten minutes or half an hour per day with my doctor... and they would give instructions to the nurse or therapists, who would carry them out. When I was in intensive care (six weeks), there was one nurse per patient because I was so close to death. There were not enough of them, and they were not appreciated, even in 2001. Things are worse now.