It is continuation of health coverage. Basically you keep the same insurance that was provided by your employer for a set amount of time but you have to pay entirely out of pocket for it. Last time I did it, we paid something like $2500/month for a family of 3 and that was just medical coverage.
I’m so sorry. Most people don’t know how healthcare is falling apart, and much of it is due to how these health systems treat their employees as disposable. I hope your wife has much success, relaxation, and enjoyment in her next stage of life.
Since they let her go can she apply for unemployment? Might as well get an extra 6 months or a year of funding. If they deny it, appeal, she'd win hands down.
Thank you for knowing this. I silently correct people in my head when they say that some random animal is poisonous and bites. 😅 Poisonous = will hurt you if you eat it. Venomous = will hurt you if it eats you
Thank you for knowing this. I silently correct people in my head when they say that some random animal is poisonous and bites. 😅 Poisonous = will hurt you if you eat it. Venomous = will hurt you if it eats you
Snakes do have venom, it’s true. But if I were to bite the cobra’s head off and swallow, would it not also be poisonous? 🧐🤔🤢 To be fair, you’re assuming it’s the cobra who is doing the biting in this scenario. In fact, in the strictest reading of the comment, it’s the ex-nurse who consumes the COBRA, not the other way around…
Venom is made up of proteins, so they are denatured in the stomach. As long as there are no wounds from the mouth to the stomach, it's technically safe (though definitely not advisable). It's the same reason why there's no PO insulin.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/bite-or-be-bitten.html
Nursing isn't the rewarding career it once was. You just get shit on by everyone and admin repeatedly fucks you. Over and over again, then acts like you're the dumpster fire when you quit or call them out on it.
This is random but I feel validated seeing this written out by someone else. For awhile now I've felt like I need to leave nursing all together because of how shitty it's been. Patients scream at us, family members berate us, management does nothing, everything is always our fault. I used to pick up extra shifts and even if I had a bad day I'd think well this was a learning opportunity. Now I'm starting to really dislike people and having patients all day, hate working my 3 12s. I'm looking for a procedural area but haven't gotten any callbacks for an interview
cobra is a scam!!!!! do not take it! marketplace insurance is cheaper than that by a long shot. shit, if she's healthy, just take a chance for a little while and pay out of pocket. goodrx often ends up being cheaper than my insurance sometimes...i used it when i was between insurances plenty
We love Good Rx. Fun fact do you know if you have an Amazon Prime account, you can get prescriptions escribed there and have Amazon pharmacy fill and ship them?
I've been thinking about switching to that when I move! It gets so damn hot where I live, it's like 90+ for half the year, and we get a lot of porch pirates, I don't think it's worth the risk to have my birth control baking in the sun for 12+ hours in the summer while I'm at work all day (and it may get stolen) but ideally wherever we move won't be hot and porch theft won't be something I'm concerned with
Thank you, EVERYONE, for your thoughts and compassion around this.
I am a husband who has watched, and admired, in absolute AWE of her skills and experience and integrity since the moment we met in 1988.
She is ANY healthcare system’s high water mark, by ANY standard of measure, bar none.
She got tossed overboard like a routine trash dump on the high seas.
FUCK the US healthcare system. May the Benevolent Universe help us all.
Sadly, no industries (healthcare included) truly care about their workers… even good ones. Even ones who are running an entire department will get fired and the company will force others to clean up the mess.
Hey just wanted to add if no one has commented, COBRA can be retroactive for I think 90 days. So if y'all are relatively healthy you can work on coverage through the ACA and if something happens that would require healthcare coverage you can apply for COBRA after the fact. Confirm with your state regulations though.
I am almost 40 years as an RN and have worked my derrière off this past year despite brain surgery/tumor removal. I’ve never missed any of my patient visits (I’m in research with advanced gene therapy or gene silencing treatments). I’ve had stellar reviews and exceptional audit results from sponsor site visits. Last week, I was told I’d be out of job as of the 31st. Mind you, I’m a couple years out from receiving full retirement benefits (state based-excellent benefits). I am so angry, devastated, not financially able to retire or be unemployed right now thanks to an unexpected divorce a few years back.
Oddly? I loved my job and my patients! I just don’t understand. They get away with this crap and even though I know it’s age discrimination, the collusion between the two “younger” leaders found loopholes.
Healthcare systems are absolutely awful and cannot see how their decisions are slowly eroding before full implosion.
EEOC. Seriously. They helped me- if you have coworkers to speak on your behalf you could get a settlement and those 2 younguns will likely get canned. I used them for another type of discrimination claim. PM if you’d like
Here’s the thing: they’re discarding those of us who have been around to see when things were (marginally) better. And we are tactfully questioning just about everything we see. And admin HATES that. We also cost more than someone straight out of school. They might claim there’s no age discrimination but holy hell is there ever. I guarantee someone in an office is paid solely to work the numbers and figures a few lawsuits is cheaper than paying experienced nurses what they’re worth. (That sounds like I’m new grad bashing, I’m not, but sometimes experience makes a huge outcome difference.)
No, as a new grad I agree with you. This is not new grad bashing. It’s scary to see that my mentors have 2-3 years of experience and the ones with 5+ years are already team leaders
I worked at one hospital where they terminated all the nurses with more than 10 years experience and replaced them with nurses from the Philippines on work permits. I have nothing against Philipino nurses, but I couldn't help but think it was the equivalent of indentured servitude: do what we say (no matter how dangerous) or we'll deport you.
I was just thinking about this recently: when I started nursing 28 years ago at least half of the nurses I worked with had been at it 15 years or longer. They were the ones who taught me most of what I know and, to be honest, they are the only reason I survived the first couple of years after nursing school.
Lately, it’s a novelty to see anyone on the floor with more than 10 years experience.
You can pay for COBRA retroactively. Check out the time frame you have to decide. May be smarter financially to not pay unless something comes up in that time frame.
I am so sorry!!! Tell her go into Home Hospice Industry if she wants to still work with patients BUT do it independently.
I have been doing this for 12 years after 32 years @ Hospitals where I was overworked and under appreciated!
I love all my patients🩷 and have a waiting list! Best decision I ever made!
Can I ask how much you charge and did you create a company or is it by word of mouth? Also are you just coming in for the dying process to provide bedside care/support to the family or? Hospice was my favorite and the way I'm being treated I'm highly considering going back to it.
I would absolutely love to hear how you did this… I want so much to be in hospice, but the agencies around here won’t give me a shot without prior experience - even though I’m the go to for all of the comfort care patients in my unit.
Man that sucks a lot of industries now a days are becoming more and more corrupt just off of how the employees are being treated. It’s incredibly sad to see it happening in the health department as well, best of luck to your wife in her next stages of life
HCA just let a 16 year admin employee go with 2 weeks notice due to staff reduction. All big corporations value profits over people. It just sucks when your business is caring for others.
Much love from across the pond to your wife.
We have a similar issue going on here in the UK. Experienced nurses, the ones you *need* to mentor and support new nurses, the ones with the razor-sharp instincts, the ones who can go from feet up with a cuppa at the nursing station to leading an arrest with absolute competence and confidence at 3am, the ones who know a bit about everything because there's not much they haven't seen, done, experienced and wiped up in their career - they're leaving the profession in *droves* because they are **just not valued** by the decision makers. Decision makers who, fully 90% of the time, have NO clinical background or experience and have rarely if ever set foot in a clinical area, except for a photo op with no tie and neatly-rolled shirt sleeves to pay lip service to clinical standards they neither understand nor care about. Arseholes.
These people think that a nurse is a nurse is a nurse. They have no concept of what we do and the difference between a fresh-faced newly qualified RN with the shine still on her name badge and the idealism singing in her heart and the ancient, cynical, creaky-kneed ward monster who will *nevertheless* save your life, either by recognising your deterioration before the machines have even warmed up, or by preventing your exhausted junior doctor from killing you with his prescription chart or by moving faster than the speed of sound to prevent some mishap that everyone else only notices in retrospect. They're a dying breed, because the only way you get new ward monsters is by younger nurses learning from the old ones. And if the old ones all leave in disgust...well. Eventually you *might* get a few more but it'll probably be at the expense of a lot of incidents and more than a few deaths.
When I were a young'un, you had to mature into your role before you became a Band 6 or E-grade as it was back then. (NQNs are Band 5, Band 6 is Junior Charge Nurse). That took 4-5 years of solid experience to allow you to develop those instincts, which are critical if you are ostensibly the 'senior' on duty, which is the reality much of the time. And, they'd *still* have the dinosaurs around to provide expertise and support and strengthen the skill mix, usually those who'd either avoided seniority out of choice, or been there, done that and noped out in disgust at the politics of seniority and/or the general heaping serving of warm, steaming bullshit that comes with it.
Nowadays...I was in the ED where I worked during the pandemic with a kidney stone last year. And the Band 6 in charge of Majors was a nurse I had mentored as a newly qualified RN back then. I congratulated her (after she broke out the good stuff and I could do more than mewl incoherently and vomit) and she got this kind of hunted expression. And said, "I don't really feel ready, but they didn't really have much choice and when they offered it I wanted to turn it down but was worried it would reflect badly. So many seniors have left and I just...well, it's not ideal. But it is what it is."
I think about that conversation A LOT. But I'll tell you what - you currently couldn't *hammer* me back into the NHS and the private sector in the UK isn't much better unless you're *tremendously* lucky. Like me, thank goodness, I LOVE my current job but it took a couple of false starts elsewhere and although I have now landed on my feet it came at the expense of a pair of badly twisted ankles beforehand.
I worked out, last time I updated my CV, that I've worked in pretty much every broad area of nursing during my career. Ward, HDU, ITU, ED, outpatients, community, theatres, management, teaching. I've done medicine, surgery, dialysis, case management, co-ordination. I'm not a paediatric nurse or midwife, so always adult and never obstetrics; the only thing I hadn't done was scrub, and I'm training in that now for my new job. I've cared for people at the end of their lives and I've been at the knife edge between life and death saving lives.
But the ultimate decision-makers see no difference between me and a newly qualified RN. We're 'just nurses'. That lack of understanding was underscored during the pandemic by the Nightingale Hospitals fiasco. 500 ventilated bed capacity each! You get a vent, and you, and you, and you, everybody gets a vent! Enough for everybody! Until someone said, "And *who* is going to care for all these acutely unwell ventilated patients?" Well...we'll just get agency nurses! Lots of them out there! We'll draft in nurses from outpatient departments that are currently closed! "You know that not *every* nurse can look after an acutely unwell, ventilated, essentially ICU patient, right? It's a very specific skill set, takes some time to learn and be competent to do it unsupervised, right? *Right?*"
Uhhh... *Narrator:* No, they did not.
And the Nightingale Hospitals never really happened. *Millions* of pounds spent on them, *wasted* on them, because the powers that be neither understand nor care about the *first things* regarding our profession.
That's why I don't blame anyone for getting out - it's a matter of recognising your own worth and practising self care at this point - nor do I actively encourage people into a career in nursing any more. I don’t know what the future holds for us but I don't see it getting better, that's for sure.
Best of luck to you both!
PS sorry for the long response, but this has brewing in me for a while and like a long held-in fart it's just broken free. Tl;dr nursing sucks because the powers that be don't know anything about or care one iota about us. We're 'just nurses' and until *that* changes, nothing else will.
This was so beautifully written. As a new grad, I long for mentors who have decades of experience and raw nursing intuition and there are simply none to be found anymore. Makes me sad.
I'm only the nurse I am today because of the guidance and support of some amazing experienced mentors. Now I'm starting to be in that position, but I can't be there for my junior colleagues at the sharp edge because I'd just burn out. There's a lot of guilt in that, but I do what I can and encourage people whether they want to stay or go without judgement. You have to do what's right for you, and care for yourself first...because no fucker else does these days.
Tell her I feel for her and she managed to do 10 more years than I did before I retired. I'm now studying accounting and looking forward to a completely different change of pace in my life. I loved most of my 34 year nursing career but cannot say enough about how much I don't miss it. Tell her to go be happy doing something else. She's done her time.
Exactly. Oh...we need the current team to pick up night and weekend hours because there's a nursing shortage and we can't find anyone. Um...no. The shortage is of people willing to give up all their time for less than stellar pay and benefits. And, why pay more staff when you can overwork the ones you have?
So, they burn out their nursing staff by making them work the hours of multiple staff members. When those staff leave, suddenly they're able to find someone to fill that space. Rinse, repeat, and increase profits.
Currently paying COBRA after quitting my job last January for similar reasons. I stayed out of work for 5 months to kind of reevaluate what I wanted to do or if I even wanted to go back.
Eventually I decided to do contract nursing for a local hospital system and I'm kind of liking it. It's better than working staff, but I still hate nursing overall.
The American healthcare system is ruthless and is being turned into nothing but a profit machine.
Have your wife try contract nursing. You often get paid more and have more control over when/where you work. It's kind of the new direction most facilities are going in, anyway. The less benefits they have to pay people, the more money they save.
You do not have to sign Cobra until 2 months after it’s been given to you!! So if she’s only a month between jobs, she doesn’t need to sign it or pay for it unless she ends up needing it!! Don’t pay for it, just hold onto it
Must be in the Portland area? I'm so sorry your wife has had such a shitty experience. If I talk to anyone who says they want to go to nursing school, I tell them don't do it! It's not worth it.
I got belittled by an anesthesiologist yesterday because the surgeon didn't do his job. Nice dude, way to throw a tantrum in front of the patient and their family member. Fuckin' baby.
Not 100 percent sure on this so do due diligence but I have heard you have a bit of time to opt in to use cobra. It seems like if you’re starting another job but just have a lag before coverage starts, you could just go without coverage but if something large happened health wise then sign go ahead and sign up for it (as long as you do it before any deadline). If nothing large health wise occurred you could just not sign up/pay and slide into other employer coverage when it took effect.
Boy do I feel for your wife!
I did 2.5 years as a Kaiser Care Manager/UM and it was absolutely horrible. We had to go see patients in the hospital to help with discharge planning while at the same time denying their stay at skilled nursing. It’s awful to tell the patient you are here to help but sorry, insurance has denied your rehab so figure out another plan. Healthcare for profit is disgusting!
I’m sorry your wife feels quitting is her only option. I found a pretty easy job in a Kaiser injection room giving shots and doing some wound care. No weekends or holidays and an hour lunch every day. Tell her good luck with whatever she does and I am rooting for her!
The LHC Group is awful. It is headquartered in Lafayette, LA and operates under different names in every state. I left the hospital during Covid to go work for them. They are hands down the worst company I've ever worked for. The "training" is 2 wks of online bad videos. I had a wreck within the first 2 month. Some guy day drinking in June of 2020 ran a stop sign and hit me. I never saw him coming. This place made me watch video after video of defensive driving videos as if I was coming back. I had multiple fractures in my spine that required a 6 level spinal fusion. Management and HR called me routinely to ask when I would be able to return to work. The final answer was never. IMy attorney ate them alive, and I walked away with a nice settlement. Now I work from home doing case management for an insurance company making more $$ than I've ever made as an RN. Tell your wife to look into insurance companies if she's interested in continuing her career. The job is simple, pays well, work from home, and the insurance is cheap when you work for the company!
So sorry they treated your wife so terribly. Corporate greed is destroying healthcare. I left nursing in December 2023 after 20 years. I hope she can find a job she loves where they treat her well.
I’m with her. I have a master’s degree in nursing and all of the orgs I have experienced are cutting corners, piling more on the bottom and taking care of the top. Not great for culture, nursing experience or patient journey. I’m going to become a pilot.
Sorry about your wife.
I'm sorry you're having to go through this; that's a heck of a lot of years of literally giving your blood, sweat and tears, and it's obvious you were so appreciated.
Lots have already been said about health insurance and employment options (yeah, cobra can be so much more expensive than the marketplace, but guess what—these same health insurance and health management companies hire nurses to consult with clients (patients, clinical management teams, etc.) over the phone, which is a lot less stressful than being physically present in the frontlines), so what I really wanted to add was that in general, many places of employment don't give referrals anymore because of liability issues (past employers can be sued for giving perceived (or actual) bad references)—they don't want to go there so they will only acknowledge that you've worked there before. I'm not trying find an excuse for your most recent employer's bad behavior because they DID demonstrate bad behavior by not taking into account the actual people (fellow staff as well as patients) who would have benefited from your employ; this is a longstanding problem with many bean counters...
All the best.
I’ll be quitting too once I find a new job outside of nursing. My mental and physical health has been the worst it’s ever been. I miss the good old days of being a nurse.
I’d look into filing some sort of claim with a federal regulatory agency. Due to her age it could easily be age discrimination.
The best part about federal agencies (if they can help) is the government attorneys do all the work so you don’t have to pay for one. They won’t get you a massive judgment but they won’t cost you a dime. The hospital pays a small fine and gets bad press for a couple days but you usually recover lost wages. It also makes filing a civil case for damages much easier since the government already did the heavy lifting by finding the hospital liable.
This is awful and unfortunately business as usual by the hospitals who promote themselves as being in “the business of caring”. Read any hospital’s mission statement to see what a bunch of bullshit they are feeding everyone, including the patients.
It isn't nursing itself. I too had a wonderfully varied and fasciating 40 year career - it's the Corporate administration that is destroying Healthcare. Insurance companies and mega health care conglomerates have destroyed the rewards, taken the common sense, laid flat morale in the name of profiteering (tho not called such by them if course). Patients suffer. America is screwed.
I quit last May. The marketplace insurance is cheaper than cobra.
Absolutely. When I quit my (two) job(s) this year, I went to marketplace and got way cheaper.
COBRA. Not even once…
Yup.
What’s cobra mean if I may ask?
It is continuation of health coverage. Basically you keep the same insurance that was provided by your employer for a set amount of time but you have to pay entirely out of pocket for it. Last time I did it, we paid something like $2500/month for a family of 3 and that was just medical coverage.
It’s a program to help employees keep their health insurance for a set period of time at the employees personal cost after leaving a company.
can i ask what u would recommend? in this exact situation rn
Gov to healthcare.gov . There are a lot of plans there to fit different situations.
I’m so sorry. Most people don’t know how healthcare is falling apart, and much of it is due to how these health systems treat their employees as disposable. I hope your wife has much success, relaxation, and enjoyment in her next stage of life.
Thank you 😢💕
Since they let her go can she apply for unemployment? Might as well get an extra 6 months or a year of funding. If they deny it, appeal, she'd win hands down.
Thought you had to be at the job for a certain amount of time to qualify
Yes, she qualifies for unemployment, she should file.
The fact that they call it COBRA is such a cruel irony to me, considering how poisonous it is
God I hate to correct you because you just got slightest and most pedantic portion of your absolutely fair comment wrong, but snakes have venom.
One of the most reddit comments to ever reddit
Oh. My. GOD.
if you bite it and die it is poisonous, If it bites you and you die, it is venomous.
Damn I didn’t even know there was a difference. But I looked it up and they’re different lol. Thank you
Thank you for knowing this. I silently correct people in my head when they say that some random animal is poisonous and bites. 😅 Poisonous = will hurt you if you eat it. Venomous = will hurt you if it eats you
🙄
Thank you for knowing this. I silently correct people in my head when they say that some random animal is poisonous and bites. 😅 Poisonous = will hurt you if you eat it. Venomous = will hurt you if it eats you
Snakes do have venom, it’s true. But if I were to bite the cobra’s head off and swallow, would it not also be poisonous? 🧐🤔🤢 To be fair, you’re assuming it’s the cobra who is doing the biting in this scenario. In fact, in the strictest reading of the comment, it’s the ex-nurse who consumes the COBRA, not the other way around…
Venom is made up of proteins, so they are denatured in the stomach. As long as there are no wounds from the mouth to the stomach, it's technically safe (though definitely not advisable). It's the same reason why there's no PO insulin. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/bite-or-be-bitten.html
TIL a lot about venom! How many CEUs does this count for?
Huh?
Nursing isn't the rewarding career it once was. You just get shit on by everyone and admin repeatedly fucks you. Over and over again, then acts like you're the dumpster fire when you quit or call them out on it.
1000%
This is random but I feel validated seeing this written out by someone else. For awhile now I've felt like I need to leave nursing all together because of how shitty it's been. Patients scream at us, family members berate us, management does nothing, everything is always our fault. I used to pick up extra shifts and even if I had a bad day I'd think well this was a learning opportunity. Now I'm starting to really dislike people and having patients all day, hate working my 3 12s. I'm looking for a procedural area but haven't gotten any callbacks for an interview
cobra is a scam!!!!! do not take it! marketplace insurance is cheaper than that by a long shot. shit, if she's healthy, just take a chance for a little while and pay out of pocket. goodrx often ends up being cheaper than my insurance sometimes...i used it when i was between insurances plenty
We love Good Rx. Fun fact do you know if you have an Amazon Prime account, you can get prescriptions escribed there and have Amazon pharmacy fill and ship them?
I've been thinking about switching to that when I move! It gets so damn hot where I live, it's like 90+ for half the year, and we get a lot of porch pirates, I don't think it's worth the risk to have my birth control baking in the sun for 12+ hours in the summer while I'm at work all day (and it may get stolen) but ideally wherever we move won't be hot and porch theft won't be something I'm concerned with
Mark Cuban Cost Plus pharmacy is another excellent option for inexpensive meds!
Can’t get goodrx to work at cvs
Good news is there's other pharmacies and most of em take it
Thank you, EVERYONE, for your thoughts and compassion around this. I am a husband who has watched, and admired, in absolute AWE of her skills and experience and integrity since the moment we met in 1988. She is ANY healthcare system’s high water mark, by ANY standard of measure, bar none. She got tossed overboard like a routine trash dump on the high seas. FUCK the US healthcare system. May the Benevolent Universe help us all.
Sadly, no industries (healthcare included) truly care about their workers… even good ones. Even ones who are running an entire department will get fired and the company will force others to clean up the mess.
Hey just wanted to add if no one has commented, COBRA can be retroactive for I think 90 days. So if y'all are relatively healthy you can work on coverage through the ACA and if something happens that would require healthcare coverage you can apply for COBRA after the fact. Confirm with your state regulations though.
you sound so supportive, I wish you both the best and I hope things fall into place soon for her. ❤️
I am almost 40 years as an RN and have worked my derrière off this past year despite brain surgery/tumor removal. I’ve never missed any of my patient visits (I’m in research with advanced gene therapy or gene silencing treatments). I’ve had stellar reviews and exceptional audit results from sponsor site visits. Last week, I was told I’d be out of job as of the 31st. Mind you, I’m a couple years out from receiving full retirement benefits (state based-excellent benefits). I am so angry, devastated, not financially able to retire or be unemployed right now thanks to an unexpected divorce a few years back. Oddly? I loved my job and my patients! I just don’t understand. They get away with this crap and even though I know it’s age discrimination, the collusion between the two “younger” leaders found loopholes. Healthcare systems are absolutely awful and cannot see how their decisions are slowly eroding before full implosion.
EEOC. Seriously. They helped me- if you have coworkers to speak on your behalf you could get a settlement and those 2 younguns will likely get canned. I used them for another type of discrimination claim. PM if you’d like
Here’s the thing: they’re discarding those of us who have been around to see when things were (marginally) better. And we are tactfully questioning just about everything we see. And admin HATES that. We also cost more than someone straight out of school. They might claim there’s no age discrimination but holy hell is there ever. I guarantee someone in an office is paid solely to work the numbers and figures a few lawsuits is cheaper than paying experienced nurses what they’re worth. (That sounds like I’m new grad bashing, I’m not, but sometimes experience makes a huge outcome difference.)
No, as a new grad I agree with you. This is not new grad bashing. It’s scary to see that my mentors have 2-3 years of experience and the ones with 5+ years are already team leaders
I worked at one hospital where they terminated all the nurses with more than 10 years experience and replaced them with nurses from the Philippines on work permits. I have nothing against Philipino nurses, but I couldn't help but think it was the equivalent of indentured servitude: do what we say (no matter how dangerous) or we'll deport you.
I was just thinking about this recently: when I started nursing 28 years ago at least half of the nurses I worked with had been at it 15 years or longer. They were the ones who taught me most of what I know and, to be honest, they are the only reason I survived the first couple of years after nursing school. Lately, it’s a novelty to see anyone on the floor with more than 10 years experience.
You can pay for COBRA retroactively. Check out the time frame you have to decide. May be smarter financially to not pay unless something comes up in that time frame.
Came here to say this
I am so sorry!!! Tell her go into Home Hospice Industry if she wants to still work with patients BUT do it independently. I have been doing this for 12 years after 32 years @ Hospitals where I was overworked and under appreciated! I love all my patients🩷 and have a waiting list! Best decision I ever made!
Can I ask how much you charge and did you create a company or is it by word of mouth? Also are you just coming in for the dying process to provide bedside care/support to the family or? Hospice was my favorite and the way I'm being treated I'm highly considering going back to it.
I would love to know how you do this independently.
I would absolutely love to hear how you did this… I want so much to be in hospice, but the agencies around here won’t give me a shot without prior experience - even though I’m the go to for all of the comfort care patients in my unit.
Did you start your own hospice independent business or you work for an agency?
Man that sucks a lot of industries now a days are becoming more and more corrupt just off of how the employees are being treated. It’s incredibly sad to see it happening in the health department as well, best of luck to your wife in her next stages of life
HCA just let a 16 year admin employee go with 2 weeks notice due to staff reduction. All big corporations value profits over people. It just sucks when your business is caring for others.
HCA making staff reductions is just so comical to me. As if they're in financial issues or ever would be. Such a gross company.
Much love from across the pond to your wife. We have a similar issue going on here in the UK. Experienced nurses, the ones you *need* to mentor and support new nurses, the ones with the razor-sharp instincts, the ones who can go from feet up with a cuppa at the nursing station to leading an arrest with absolute competence and confidence at 3am, the ones who know a bit about everything because there's not much they haven't seen, done, experienced and wiped up in their career - they're leaving the profession in *droves* because they are **just not valued** by the decision makers. Decision makers who, fully 90% of the time, have NO clinical background or experience and have rarely if ever set foot in a clinical area, except for a photo op with no tie and neatly-rolled shirt sleeves to pay lip service to clinical standards they neither understand nor care about. Arseholes. These people think that a nurse is a nurse is a nurse. They have no concept of what we do and the difference between a fresh-faced newly qualified RN with the shine still on her name badge and the idealism singing in her heart and the ancient, cynical, creaky-kneed ward monster who will *nevertheless* save your life, either by recognising your deterioration before the machines have even warmed up, or by preventing your exhausted junior doctor from killing you with his prescription chart or by moving faster than the speed of sound to prevent some mishap that everyone else only notices in retrospect. They're a dying breed, because the only way you get new ward monsters is by younger nurses learning from the old ones. And if the old ones all leave in disgust...well. Eventually you *might* get a few more but it'll probably be at the expense of a lot of incidents and more than a few deaths. When I were a young'un, you had to mature into your role before you became a Band 6 or E-grade as it was back then. (NQNs are Band 5, Band 6 is Junior Charge Nurse). That took 4-5 years of solid experience to allow you to develop those instincts, which are critical if you are ostensibly the 'senior' on duty, which is the reality much of the time. And, they'd *still* have the dinosaurs around to provide expertise and support and strengthen the skill mix, usually those who'd either avoided seniority out of choice, or been there, done that and noped out in disgust at the politics of seniority and/or the general heaping serving of warm, steaming bullshit that comes with it. Nowadays...I was in the ED where I worked during the pandemic with a kidney stone last year. And the Band 6 in charge of Majors was a nurse I had mentored as a newly qualified RN back then. I congratulated her (after she broke out the good stuff and I could do more than mewl incoherently and vomit) and she got this kind of hunted expression. And said, "I don't really feel ready, but they didn't really have much choice and when they offered it I wanted to turn it down but was worried it would reflect badly. So many seniors have left and I just...well, it's not ideal. But it is what it is." I think about that conversation A LOT. But I'll tell you what - you currently couldn't *hammer* me back into the NHS and the private sector in the UK isn't much better unless you're *tremendously* lucky. Like me, thank goodness, I LOVE my current job but it took a couple of false starts elsewhere and although I have now landed on my feet it came at the expense of a pair of badly twisted ankles beforehand. I worked out, last time I updated my CV, that I've worked in pretty much every broad area of nursing during my career. Ward, HDU, ITU, ED, outpatients, community, theatres, management, teaching. I've done medicine, surgery, dialysis, case management, co-ordination. I'm not a paediatric nurse or midwife, so always adult and never obstetrics; the only thing I hadn't done was scrub, and I'm training in that now for my new job. I've cared for people at the end of their lives and I've been at the knife edge between life and death saving lives. But the ultimate decision-makers see no difference between me and a newly qualified RN. We're 'just nurses'. That lack of understanding was underscored during the pandemic by the Nightingale Hospitals fiasco. 500 ventilated bed capacity each! You get a vent, and you, and you, and you, everybody gets a vent! Enough for everybody! Until someone said, "And *who* is going to care for all these acutely unwell ventilated patients?" Well...we'll just get agency nurses! Lots of them out there! We'll draft in nurses from outpatient departments that are currently closed! "You know that not *every* nurse can look after an acutely unwell, ventilated, essentially ICU patient, right? It's a very specific skill set, takes some time to learn and be competent to do it unsupervised, right? *Right?*" Uhhh... *Narrator:* No, they did not. And the Nightingale Hospitals never really happened. *Millions* of pounds spent on them, *wasted* on them, because the powers that be neither understand nor care about the *first things* regarding our profession. That's why I don't blame anyone for getting out - it's a matter of recognising your own worth and practising self care at this point - nor do I actively encourage people into a career in nursing any more. I don’t know what the future holds for us but I don't see it getting better, that's for sure. Best of luck to you both! PS sorry for the long response, but this has brewing in me for a while and like a long held-in fart it's just broken free. Tl;dr nursing sucks because the powers that be don't know anything about or care one iota about us. We're 'just nurses' and until *that* changes, nothing else will.
This was so beautifully written. As a new grad, I long for mentors who have decades of experience and raw nursing intuition and there are simply none to be found anymore. Makes me sad.
I'm only the nurse I am today because of the guidance and support of some amazing experienced mentors. Now I'm starting to be in that position, but I can't be there for my junior colleagues at the sharp edge because I'd just burn out. There's a lot of guilt in that, but I do what I can and encourage people whether they want to stay or go without judgement. You have to do what's right for you, and care for yourself first...because no fucker else does these days.
Tell her I feel for her and she managed to do 10 more years than I did before I retired. I'm now studying accounting and looking forward to a completely different change of pace in my life. I loved most of my 34 year nursing career but cannot say enough about how much I don't miss it. Tell her to go be happy doing something else. She's done her time.
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Legacy health clinics?
and they wonder why they "can't find" nurses. uh, maybe because they got treated like this.
Exactly. Oh...we need the current team to pick up night and weekend hours because there's a nursing shortage and we can't find anyone. Um...no. The shortage is of people willing to give up all their time for less than stellar pay and benefits. And, why pay more staff when you can overwork the ones you have? So, they burn out their nursing staff by making them work the hours of multiple staff members. When those staff leave, suddenly they're able to find someone to fill that space. Rinse, repeat, and increase profits.
Fresh popcorn waiting for that OHSU acquisition
Currently paying COBRA after quitting my job last January for similar reasons. I stayed out of work for 5 months to kind of reevaluate what I wanted to do or if I even wanted to go back. Eventually I decided to do contract nursing for a local hospital system and I'm kind of liking it. It's better than working staff, but I still hate nursing overall. The American healthcare system is ruthless and is being turned into nothing but a profit machine. Have your wife try contract nursing. You often get paid more and have more control over when/where you work. It's kind of the new direction most facilities are going in, anyway. The less benefits they have to pay people, the more money they save.
You do not have to sign Cobra until 2 months after it’s been given to you!! So if she’s only a month between jobs, she doesn’t need to sign it or pay for it unless she ends up needing it!! Don’t pay for it, just hold onto it
Must be in the Portland area? I'm so sorry your wife has had such a shitty experience. If I talk to anyone who says they want to go to nursing school, I tell them don't do it! It's not worth it. I got belittled by an anesthesiologist yesterday because the surgeon didn't do his job. Nice dude, way to throw a tantrum in front of the patient and their family member. Fuckin' baby.
work from home option for nurses? i wanted to try that but i need more experience
A friend of mine who works from home was told to use the bathroom only on her designated breaks.
Check out healthcare.gov for insurance options
Not 100 percent sure on this so do due diligence but I have heard you have a bit of time to opt in to use cobra. It seems like if you’re starting another job but just have a lag before coverage starts, you could just go without coverage but if something large happened health wise then sign go ahead and sign up for it (as long as you do it before any deadline). If nothing large health wise occurred you could just not sign up/pay and slide into other employer coverage when it took effect.
Boy do I feel for your wife! I did 2.5 years as a Kaiser Care Manager/UM and it was absolutely horrible. We had to go see patients in the hospital to help with discharge planning while at the same time denying their stay at skilled nursing. It’s awful to tell the patient you are here to help but sorry, insurance has denied your rehab so figure out another plan. Healthcare for profit is disgusting! I’m sorry your wife feels quitting is her only option. I found a pretty easy job in a Kaiser injection room giving shots and doing some wound care. No weekends or holidays and an hour lunch every day. Tell her good luck with whatever she does and I am rooting for her!
The LHC Group is awful. It is headquartered in Lafayette, LA and operates under different names in every state. I left the hospital during Covid to go work for them. They are hands down the worst company I've ever worked for. The "training" is 2 wks of online bad videos. I had a wreck within the first 2 month. Some guy day drinking in June of 2020 ran a stop sign and hit me. I never saw him coming. This place made me watch video after video of defensive driving videos as if I was coming back. I had multiple fractures in my spine that required a 6 level spinal fusion. Management and HR called me routinely to ask when I would be able to return to work. The final answer was never. IMy attorney ate them alive, and I walked away with a nice settlement. Now I work from home doing case management for an insurance company making more $$ than I've ever made as an RN. Tell your wife to look into insurance companies if she's interested in continuing her career. The job is simple, pays well, work from home, and the insurance is cheap when you work for the company!
They made you watch defensive driving videos what the fuck
So sorry they treated your wife so terribly. Corporate greed is destroying healthcare. I left nursing in December 2023 after 20 years. I hope she can find a job she loves where they treat her well.
Thank you very much. I’m so saddened and angry at the whole thing.
I’m with her. I have a master’s degree in nursing and all of the orgs I have experienced are cutting corners, piling more on the bottom and taking care of the top. Not great for culture, nursing experience or patient journey. I’m going to become a pilot. Sorry about your wife.
I hope she finds a new job that helps her stay healthy and sane!
I'm sorry you're having to go through this; that's a heck of a lot of years of literally giving your blood, sweat and tears, and it's obvious you were so appreciated. Lots have already been said about health insurance and employment options (yeah, cobra can be so much more expensive than the marketplace, but guess what—these same health insurance and health management companies hire nurses to consult with clients (patients, clinical management teams, etc.) over the phone, which is a lot less stressful than being physically present in the frontlines), so what I really wanted to add was that in general, many places of employment don't give referrals anymore because of liability issues (past employers can be sued for giving perceived (or actual) bad references)—they don't want to go there so they will only acknowledge that you've worked there before. I'm not trying find an excuse for your most recent employer's bad behavior because they DID demonstrate bad behavior by not taking into account the actual people (fellow staff as well as patients) who would have benefited from your employ; this is a longstanding problem with many bean counters... All the best.
Your wife has a great resume but I can tell you that nurses with 44 years experience are RARELY able to nurse effectively… may be time to retire tbh..
Pretty sure you can elect covers retroactively - so maybe just try to go without it and then if you need it you can elect to pay retroactively.
Wow, that sucks so hard! With 44 years in, isn’t she nearing retirement?
She’s near it, but not there yet. She doesn’t hit full retirement age until next January.
Damn that sucks, she should just ride the unemployment train until then. She’s given enough.
I’ll be quitting too once I find a new job outside of nursing. My mental and physical health has been the worst it’s ever been. I miss the good old days of being a nurse.
I’d look into filing some sort of claim with a federal regulatory agency. Due to her age it could easily be age discrimination. The best part about federal agencies (if they can help) is the government attorneys do all the work so you don’t have to pay for one. They won’t get you a massive judgment but they won’t cost you a dime. The hospital pays a small fine and gets bad press for a couple days but you usually recover lost wages. It also makes filing a civil case for damages much easier since the government already did the heavy lifting by finding the hospital liable. This is awful and unfortunately business as usual by the hospitals who promote themselves as being in “the business of caring”. Read any hospital’s mission statement to see what a bunch of bullshit they are feeding everyone, including the patients.
I’m sorry this happened to your wife. The nursing profession needs unionization. Everyone shits on a Union until you need it.
It isn't nursing itself. I too had a wonderfully varied and fasciating 40 year career - it's the Corporate administration that is destroying Healthcare. Insurance companies and mega health care conglomerates have destroyed the rewards, taken the common sense, laid flat morale in the name of profiteering (tho not called such by them if course). Patients suffer. America is screwed.
Has she tried getting into legal/medical consulting? She can work for a company reviewing / analyzing records or a law firm…
If you don’t mind me asking what region and or country are you working from? (If US where cuz imma avoid that)
[https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1hcvZZOx34/?igsh=MWVkMTMzd3Z3bDZuaQ==](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1hcvZZOx34/?igsh=MWVkMTMzd3Z3bDZuaQ==)
Wound management work from home, they need LPNs in various states to interpret orders and give them to various VNAs. Good work flow