It seems that there are many more people licensed as nurses than are working as nurses. Why is this?

Chances are that it's true of every profession.

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Yeah, I've noticed that a lot of people licensed as doctors are working as doctors.

For one, they may be licenced as an RN but decide to stay home with the kids. Secondly, they might be going back to school for a less "hands on" job like teaching or say a nurse practioner or a researcher. Also maybe they found that they hate the job

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I'm not but I will play doctor with the right female.

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I think this may be the case. It seems that many hospital (and other) personnel go out of their way to make life unbearable for themselves and coworkers.

I also wonder if hospitals are losing money on so many patients due to recent insurance reimbursement changes that they may be using the "nursing shortage" as an excuse to close beds that could cost them money.

Father in-law's wife is a nurse. At her hospital, they can 'mandate' a shift such that you are required to stay a full shift after your normal one if someone calls off. So, she can essentially never make plans unless she's got the day off after a first shift day the previous day. They also get no overtime pay for these mandated times, and the admins use it as a way to cut costs. Basically, the nurses get screwwed all the way around, receive very little respect from the mgt. and morale is incredibly low. I wouldn't want to be involved with the medical field in any way. (except perhaps the paychecks... but these are no great shakes these days unless you're some fancy specialist)

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Maybe and maybe not. The problem is that nurses are in such short supply that they can move anywhere they want. For instance, my wife could get a job in Whackoland if she wanted. They are soliciting her every now and then. Currently, at least here, it seems like they want to hire but there are often not enough people to fill the positions. My wife is in the Mobil Unit. That means she is a filler for everything from the Whackoward to ER to ICU, etc,etc. She goes in to work, looks at the board and goes where they assign her. She is cross trained in every floor except the operating room. Sometimes, if another floor has a more urgent need than the one she is assigned to, she is pulled out of that floor and reassigned. Well, years before she joined, the old manager insisted on having at least 1 year in a critical care unit (ICU, ER). At the time my wife joined, the standing order from the manager was that she did not want to interview anyone without hospital experience (note that they didn't have to have critical care experience, just hospital experience). That was 3 years ago. My wife worked for a nursing home before that and was rejected by HR until my wife showed her that she had a side job doing a lot of other stuff. Well, in the last year, they are even hiring fresh graduates without ANY experience. Times have changed.

As far as making people's life miserable, that is part of the job description of a manager or so it seems.

I think the problem is that there is a real shortage. Even in bad times, nurses are still in demand. Look at the hiring lists. Every sunday when I look at the ads, there is at least 1 whole page for nurses.

As far as insurance goes, I don't think that is where the problem lies. I believe it is with medicare and medicaid. The problem is that the reimbursements are so low and you have to spend so much time dealing with the reimbursements that they are probably making $0.40 or so on the dollar. This is why I told my wife that when she graduates as a nurse practioner, if she works for a corporation she has no choice but to handle government insurance. However, if I am involved at all in her setting up a private clinic, she knows that this clinic will only handle private pay patients or insurance patients. No medicaid or medicare. Why get paid less than half (according to a medicare processor who does the claims) the insurance rate and take the same risks?

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I do not think that a nurse can be grossed out, those people have seen everything. Most times it will be oozing out of somewhere that it shouldnt be. It's a dirty job and there is a shortage of people doing it. Hence why if your a nurse, you can get a job anywhere in the world.

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I know that by law they can mandate a shift. However, I don't think it is an everyday affair. In fact, I know that some nurses change jobs like I change pants. I know that if my wife gets mandated, they pay her and extra $100 for her time and anything after 8 hrs is overtime irrespective of what hours she works. IOW, if she works 1 shift a week and is mandated, she gets 8 hrs of time, 8 hrs of overtime and $100. Can this nurse go somewhere else to work? I would think that there are other places where you can get a better work condition.

As to being screwed, we all get screwed. Every job has it's share of people screwing with you. If not one way then it is another way

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The nurses here are different. In England or Asia, they are little more than handmaidens. Every job is good and bad. It all depends. Take a job at Wal*Mart. You don't have to be a kollege grad. You work and then you go home. No worries. Pay sucks but what do you want? It has it's good and bad.

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First becoming an RN is not an easy task. Nurses are treated like crap by everyone, even though they are the primary care giver they are treated like a orderly. Because of the school requirments most RN would be's move on to be PA's or Doc's.


Oops one more thing.......the pay sucks in comparison to the responibility. Hospitals pay IT monkeys that are a dime a dozen more than nurses.

What hospital? My wife gets paid twice what I was paid as an IT person and I was way more dispensable than her. She could quit her job today and get another tomorrow. No IT person I know of could say that. She gets solicitations by phone for all kinds of jobs right now that she doesn't even want whereas I had to look in the papers.

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I wouldn't be a GP because they make about $150K or so and about $60+K is eaten up by the insurance they have to carry. I told the wife to either be a MB with a speciality for stick to being an RN. However, because she has arthritis, she cannot keep up this pace forever so she decided to be an APNP.

Unfortunately, my wife works for a union. I say that because the union does everything from beginning to end so wages are averaged out. She checked into getting a job at Janesville. While they paid her $5 less to be an RN there, they will pay her a 20% bonus for being to rotate to any floor they have. However, she doesn't like to drive and she is nearing the end for her school.

They have mandatory overtime where she works. You can be mandated to stay 2 times a year at the most. The benifits are alright and she gets $5000 a year (prorated on her status) for continuing education which is why she whored herself out to a union.

My light at the end of the tunnel is that I don't have to go explaining why I want this drug and not that to the doctor at the end of it. The only restrictions are Sched II drugs. If that gets more than that, I will have to divorce her so I can get her to be my primary care person. Guess we will live in sin then.

My wife who might be prejudiced seems to see that the nurses churned out by UW seem to be more timid when they are doing clinicals. Based on her experience at UW Madison, I can believe it. We went to MATC and they told us that the wait was over 3 years and because we were not citizens at the time, it was about 6 years. We tried UW and got sent here, there and the other till I gave up and put her in Edgewood Kollege. Talked to 1 person and it was done after we filled up paperwork. I don't think there is any way to lower academic standards because even if you pass them thru all their classes, you still have the state boards which will fail you if you don't know which end is up.

BTW, how was her stay at UW? I know my wife hated to drive so much that she started her MSN at UW. Did a class on Advanced Med Surg and spent the entire class talking rubbish and writing a 30 page paper on Tomatos. Nothing she could use at all. After that and a couple of classes, she had enough and transfered to Marquette where she is very happy. I just drive her so she doesn't have to beat herself up and I like to drive. My theory is that the student gets to be used as an unofficial research arm for the instructor. She and several students called out the instructor who was unable to explain why they had to write a paper on the Tomato and it's significance.

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My SO is a nurse and has chosen to work agency rather than a traditional job. The pay scale for full-time nurses is horrid. They risk their licenses daily due largely to understaffing, are routinely given more work to do than is reasonable, often have to do everything from managing the floor and staff to cleaning butts. Agency nurses are routinely worked harder than staff nurses, and are often reviled for working for an agency, but earn from $15 to $25 per hour more than staff does, plus they usually get greater responsibility (read that a higher patient count) and are first in line to be back stabbed in a profession that is notorious for back stabbing ways..

But the broader issue is that nursing is a meat grinder of a job. Burn out and stress are rampant. No one of normal emotional build could do what nurses do without gaining an endless list of open emotional wounds and scars along the way. Plus nurses routinely have to lift folks weighing up to and over 300 lbs, which is very hard on the nurse’s body. One of my sisters, also a nurse, ended up having to have back surgery because of lifting a patient. It is common for nurses to never get a rest or meal period while working. I would bet that most guys here wouldn’t tolerate what most nurses do on a daily basis. So ultimately a lot of nurses call it quits after a few years and move on. I went to school with another nurse who had earned a 4 year BSN, worked in cardiology at a major hospital, and after 2 years went back to school and ultimately got a PhD in English. She teaches at a U. Even after 2 years as a nurse she hated the work, the arrogance of most docs, the heartless ways of administrators and the pervasive indifference that grows from dealing with the relentless tragedies that grace hospitals and care facilities everywhere.

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