>
> Here's my take on the nursing shortage. Nursing, like teaching, is a
> highly skilled job. However, this job pays like an unskilled job. Why
> is that? Well, in the past there was a pool of labor that could not
> get other work and remain "respectable". 50 years ago, a middle-class
> woman who wanted to work outside the home could either be a nurse or a
> teacher. So these professions had an artificially inflated labor pool
> to draw from.
>
> Nowadays, >50% of med school graduates are women. Before, they would
> have been nurses. We need to change our societal expectaions of
> nursing and stop thinking of it as unskilled labor.
Mm., the far right wing will blame uppity feminists for this of course.
Nursing doesn't pay good because of society's histoory of de-valuing women
and jobs traditionally done by women. So onece they can, women will get
into the professions, where they can get closer to pay parity with
men. Medicine is only one area where this happens.
Well, a lot of the work has been de-skilled because of the shortage -
unskilled people get hired to change bedpans and make beds and such and it
can happen that they even get into the position of havingto provide
medical care which they are unqualified to provide. It's worrisome in
terms of care quality.
>
> The other problem is that market forces can't really work on the
> nursing shortage, since so many nursing jobs are public sector. They'd
> rather let a job go unfilled than pay the neccesary wages.
>
I wonder what percentage is public and what private (and do private
hospitals pay better than public ones?) More the scandal if private sector
does not pay good, because they enrich their executives and stockholders
while patient care goes down the toilet.
Kristin
daughter of a retired public health nurse
