Nurses suffer from low morale in part because they do many tasks outside their core training, such as answering telephones, changing bed linens, transporting patients for lab tests and drawing blood.
The same can be said for primary care physicians who spend much of their time filling out forms, obtaining pre-authorizations, and navigating through the bureaucratic maze of health insurer paperwork.
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The article reports on the VA nurses.
The VA is a SINGLE PAYOR system. The wider market isn’t gumdrops and roses but Nationalizing Health Care will not make Nursing or Physician morale better; especially when rationing occurs.
Phoenix
Horsefeathers! Nurses were doing even more of those things 50 years ago. VA nurses have low morale because anyone who has an outcome oriented attitude towards their work–and most nurses by necessity do–is demoralized in a socialist system that rewards sloth and punishes proactive efforts to improve productivity–and the VA does so in spades! Changing linen does not sap a nurses morale–it is doing it because you know that the patient will lie in filth if YOU don’t because the person who actually is paid to do it is a deadhead slug. Work is not demoralizing–doing someone else’s work in front of their face is soul sucking.
Passivity and helpless attitudes on the part of many primary care docs leave them feeling similarly abused as they are “forced” to give away their time uncompensated to help others screw them. Sort of like building your own gallows. But those who avoid the helplessness, take charge of their time and practice, and refuse to cooperate with being “forced” to do other’s work for them maintain a better attitude and enjoy their practice. The rest whine and hope for a savior ( politicians, EMR’s, national health insurance, etc)
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