There’s also a 12% rise in health care costs next year and significantly higher premiums, especially for part-time workers whose family members are on their insurance, she said. There just hasn't been, really, much of anything done to retain the staff that we have.”īut the raise hikes still wouldn’t cover cost of living increases, Pontifex said, pointing to the 5.9% increase in Social Security for 2022. “Sparrow talks about radical loving care, but we just aren't feeling that. A lot of nurses are leaving for jobs … out of state or where they can work from home or where they’re not hit as much with the effects of a pandemic. “A lot of our nurses have left to become travel nurses. So we're not retaining the current experienced staff that we have. “Nurses are leaving for better opportunities,” she said. More: Rapid at-home COVID tests fly off Michigan store shelves as pandemic demand outpaces supply More: K-12 schools without mask mandates in Michigan saw 62% more coronavirus spread More: Michigan Senate GOP OKs bills restricting student COVID-19 vaccine, mask rules So it's definitely putting a strain on my co-workers and I,” she said. “We have COVID patients now that we have to account for, which have higher acuity. Now, she said, it’s not unusual to have mothers of newborns who have COVID-19 or other illnesses, which adds more work on top of the already higher patient loads she and other health care workers in her unit are carrying. Registered nurse Tracie Cullinan, who has worked the last five years in the Mother Baby Center at Sparrow Hospital, said pre-pandemic, most of the women and infants she cared for were healthy. “In obstetric emergencies, you sometimes have minutes to respond to an emergency, and that can be the difference between a lifelong deficit for a neonate" and life-threatening heavy bleeding for the mother. These shortages are “absolutely” putting moms and babies at risk, she said. And they struggle with what they say has, as a result, become an unsafe level of patient care. After 20 months of putting their own lives on the line and bearing witness to pandemic-era levels of death and suffering, now they’re watching an exodus of team members leaving the health care field altogether. The issues here - like hazard pay, longevity bonuses, health insurance costs and wages - are being hashed out across the country, as patient volumes and staffing shortages continue to put enormous pressure on an already burned-out workforce.īut lately, contract fights have reached a new and unsettling pitch, workers in several health systems say. Henry Ford Health: 400 employees quit over COVID-19 vaccine mandate 92% fully vaccinated Staffing crisis, patient riskīitter fights over whether hospitals are doing enough to retain and recruit health care workers aren’t unique to Sparrow. More: Michigan's new top doc on pandemic response: 'None of this should be political' More: Michigan emergency room patients left on stretchers, then recliners, in swamped wards … Is Sparrow any different? I don’t know that.” We’ve put in rest(ing) rooms and we’ve done massage chairs, and we’ve given bonuses and we’ve given money, and we’ve made resources available. “We’ve addressed issues from assault by patients on staff. “I’ve never been in a place where we tried to do as much” for the staff, Alan Vierling, the president of Sparrow Hospital, said Friday.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |