Yup, while it's no doubt old fashioned to think that "ass" is vulgar, I'm sure many folks would agree with me... but I'm also very aware, just as many (more?) would say it's not. It's absence from the FCC's forbidden list suggests, I suppose, it's becoming more "mainstream."
I personally consider "jackass" as slang, and the use of it or "ass" when referring to a donkey as uneducated or used for color... just my two cents. But hey, I come from a generation that considered "shut up" as vulgar too.
I agree. While I like Stern, I think his show is indecent and is more appropriate for the more controlled access that satellite broadcast provides (for the time being). I was struck how Stern's statements about being kept out of court were third-hand information over and over again. IANAL, but I don't see how the government/FCC could prevent someone from suing them or making a big enough stink in the media to force it if such was the case. On the other hand, if Viacom was late with paperwork or through some legal requirement if they must pay legally prescribed fines before a second action can occur, that's hardly the FCC's fault.
Obviously you have no children. If you do, I'd challenge you to show the mother of your kids your post and see what she thinks. Some people are just not capable of being parents and teaching deceny and morality. I'm definitely not a bible thumper and rarely (twice in the last 10 years) attend church, but I have a sense of what's right and wrong. Vulgarity in public is never appropriate and is a sign of an immature mind that can't think socially above a certain level.
There are many liberals who also appreciate government regulation when it comes to game/movie ratings, parental advisories, etc. It's not simply an artifact of the "right wing X-tians (sic)".
If money is being transfered out of broadcaster pockets and into the coffers of the FCC, who's fault is that? I suspect broadcasters are well versed in the various "naughty words" (Carlin's phrase, not mine) that shouldn't be broadcast. I for one am not such a fool to think that Jackson/Timberlake pulled off their stunt without any prior knowledge/approval of CBS.
When I read that the first time in TFA, I didn't presume he meant "government standardization". If Mr Powell meant "government standardization" and if you take "laizzez-faire" literally (something like "people rule" as I recall) then I think you're right, the market place (consumers) pretty much decided on their favorite hardware/software of the time among that which was available (having been there at the time myself). I'd have a hard time believing Mr Powell would make that kind of error.
And many of us think a few words, including "ass", should be kept of the public's airwaves. It's a sad state when decency has to be legislated. Do what you want with cable, satellite, and theaters, but allow me some peace of mind to know young kids aren't deluged with vulgar language before they're old enough to understand the rudiments of various social situations and the right/wrong contexts in which these words might be used if desired. Too many people don't realize the importance of this until they start having kids of their own, then they're keenly aware of parental advisories and game/movie ratings.
Interesting, in none of the replies has anyone mentioned someone getting dizzy and/or consequently (?) raining on Santa's parade. Perhaps I should have prefaced my comment with accolades on the engineering accomplishment (though nothing suggests that it's spectacularly innovative). I just asked something based on the perception of constant rotational motion. If you hadn't noticed, probably due to scale, we don't notice the world spinning, but I'd bet you'd notice the rooms in the described apartment changing. Unless you discount the whole idea of motion sickness.
There are a few studies that link the nausea experienced by many people who operate poorly designed flight simulators with the small "disconnects" between seen and felt motion. The same thing happens in many videogames such as the early first person shooters.
Well, for once I did RTFA, and having lived previously in San Antonio (Texas) as well as Dallas (Texas), I've had many opportunities to dine at a couple of tower-top revolving restaurants (rotation ~1/hr). While not "exactly dizzying", it can be somewhat disconcerting to see the scenery changing minutely but perceptively. When writing the comment, I was thinking more along the terms of subtle changes over months/years of "exposure" as I'm not aware of any prior prolonged human experience like this being studied/reported... I was just curious. If nothing else, I'm sure lying in bed at night, you'd feel the machinery.
Seems like on some level, this would be extremely disorienting after a period of time. I'm sure the view is probably spectacular, but you'd probably find just one view you liked best and and be tempted to keep your "floor" stopped in that direction thus defeating the purpose of the rotation.
Glad to hear from a satisfied Vonage user. Looking at reviews over the internet, you see so many pro's and con's. I was all set to jump on VoIP when they decided to let SBC control prices on the critical internet-to-POTS connection. I was taking a step back to see how Vonage/Packet 8/et al responded pricewise.
You know, it could be that MS purchased Giant so they don't have to do their own research into the intricacies of how some spyware is installed, avoids detection, and re-inserts itself after "removal". Sometimes an hour with the book beats a week in the lab. If they'd only hired the expertise (who probably currently work for A/V companies), they might have been sued for IP theft.
...so that buyer can know prior to purchase, caveat emptor and all that jazz, IMHO. Of course not every product we purchase has such explanations, I simply believe it would be helpful given the relative newness of MP3 players and the lack of technology acumen of most buyers.
The only link I find on Apple's website (using their search engine for DRM) gives this short blurb: iTunes does not play unprotected WMA files, but instead converts the files to the file format selected in Importing preferences.
iTunes for Windows cannot import or play WMA files that are protected by Windows Media Digital Rights Management (DRM).
So, just how is one supposed to learn about other DRM restrictions? And is it fair to change things after a purchase? For example, the above restriction would seem to eliminate WalMart.Com (DRM'd) as a song source.
While I agree with your statement that Apple is doing nothing morally, legally, technically wrong; the question of ethics is something else. I don't own an iPod, but I presume once you purchase one and open the box, there's a pamphlet inside mentioning specifications, ie, what the player will/won't play. The cya phrase of, "specifications subject to change without notice", hardly seems "ethical" in any context.
My reason to upgrade was the availability of Office 2K3 for nearly free (something like $70 for all of Word/Access/Excel/ InfoPath/Outlook/ Viso/Publisher together) through a corporate-partnership (?) program between my employer and MS. Previously I had gotten my copies of Office at various computer shows cheaply but the vendor eventually quit coming to the shows.
Re:Look at the new iMac. Look at a tablet. See the
on
Tablet Mac Becomes Reality
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I can see the usefulness of a tablet PC in a medical clinic setting when a healthcare provider is interviewing a patient. As it is now, it's common to have a desktop in the examination room to lookup test results. It would be nice to have something more portable with existing capabilities (ie, wireless) and an application (and some clinics do) where you would have a checklist (at a bare minimum) of items to mark yes/no during the patient's history taking. The current hardware doesn't seem to be portable/rugged/usable enough just yet. PDA's (mostly Palm-based around here) are everywhere now, but not tablet computers.
That's usually the case with teacher unable to bring themselves down to the level of the students he is teaching.
Hey, I remember that guy from college, he taught freshman calculus and wore the same dirty shirt everyday for the first half of the semester (after which I dropped). Looked sort of like Einstein, but could not communicate an idea or explain a concept to save his life. I'm sure many of us have had instructors like that.
After reading through the other posts on the topic, it appears there's a definite age bias to the offerings. Not surprisingly, the younger crowd says chatting away for hours on-end is no big deal and should be "encouraged" by keeping computers in kids' bedrooms. The other group of responses from, apparently, an older crowd suggests just the opposite... remove the computers and place them in a more public spot. Of the two groups, I'd have to think the one with more life experience is where I'd go for insight. Time and again, the "respectable"/"credible" people on this topic suggest the latter, moving computers to public areas, limiting on-line time, supervising on-line activity, talking with kids about on-line safety and alternative activities. Someone else already posted that it's your job to be a parent not a friend and along with this comes some not-so-popular decisions and discussions regarding how to cross a street safely, using the telephone, bedtimes, choosing friends, drinking/drugs/sex, etc.
But then again, what do I know, by/. standards I'm an ol'timer... but then, so is anyone out of high school.
One of the the nice things about using the VHS tapes back in mid-1980s or so, was their ~5GB capacity and easy storage. The company I worked for had a large fireproof vault (~4ft x 3ft x 8ft) inside a huge Faraday cage (40ft x 40ft) into which the company's backups were kept. That would have been impossible to do with disk drives then, but only mildly inconvenient now with hot-swappable drives. I read somewhere that a well-kept disk drive should last about 20 years on the shelf.
Re:... was tried.
on
The VHS is Dead
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Actually, a "standard" cassette recorder was quite often used in the early TRS80 / Apple / SwTPC / Altair days for software distribution and data recording. The larger businesses using minicomputers (VAX and such) used 9-track magnetic tape drives and 2400 foot tapes at 800 or 1600bpi, then 6250 bpi (the latter, in GCR format, was very forgiving of errors as it had built in redundancy). However, with several hundred megabytes (circa 1970's-1980's) to save, this required several tape changes and an "operator" for system backups. Better equipped shops had VHS data records (though they never really caught on so far as I know). As I recall, they stored about 5GB per standard VHS tape. Heaven forbid if an error occurred on the tape as they weren't very forgiving owing to the whole concept of where to place the TOC.
Aww, give me a little credit. If you've read ANY of my other posts in this thread, you already know I'm a health care professional with more than a casual background in nursing issues.
I sense you're angry and bitter, however the statements I made are correct to the best of my knowledge and experience. Yours and your wife's mileage may vary of course.
I'll try to address some points you raised. Most nurses work an 8 hour shift, generally 7am-3pm, 3pm-11pm, or 11pm-7am. That's pretty standard, however, there are places that experiment with different hours including 4 x 10 hour or 3 x 12 hour shifts to allow nurses an extra day off while still approximating a 40-hour work week. The nurses I've known (several hundred by now) try to get their charting done by end of shift but there's usually notes, clean up, and sign-out that takes an extra 30 minutes. The hospitals and clinics where I've worked always allowed at least 30 minutes for lunch/dinner. To say otherwise would really be exaggerating or a very unusual circumstance. Federal and state law for non-salaried employees governs this.
Staffing levels do "suck" but there's a concerted effort to reduce it. I'm not sure what part of my statement regarding the issues of workload and safety you didn't understand. I've mentioned that several times as one of the major reasons why nurses dislike their jobs. From the sounds of your story, it doesn't appear that any amount of money would have kept your wife interested in nursing (a point I've made in other posts too).
Sadly, anyone who enters the medical profession is aware of the risk of infectious diseases. A person knows that going into the profession and it's reiterated in training and on the job over and over again. The risk is probably no higher for nurses than other providers depending on the specialty of each. As you know, for privacy reasons, patients can't currently be tested for many diseases without their knowledge and consent. This most importantly includes HIV. It would be very reassuring to know you were only taking care of healthy people (no TB, Hep C, HIV, etc), but then why would they be at the hospital or clinic? Surgeons as well as nurses and other providers, including administrative staff confront these risks daily. The standard philosophy is to treat everyone as if they have a communicable disease ("universal precautions"). Some people forget that or get sloppy or accidents simply happen. That's just life and no amount of up-front knowledge will eliminate the risk completely.
It's too bad your wife wasn't able to pursue becoming a lactation consultant, those that I work with love their jobs. Years ago, one didn't really need any sort of credentials to be called a lactation consultant; however, these day that's changing. Along the same thought, I only mentioned the career path of nurses to point out that it's not a "dead-end job" for many who want to (and can) change their practice. I certainly DID NOT mean to imply, "If they don't like their jobs, they should change."
As far as giving bad news, myself and most of the colleagues I know deliver the news themselves because there are the inevitable questions that nurses would simply defer anyways. So yes, I've had to tell many patients extrodinarily tragic news. In the geographic area where I practice, it's very uncommon for a nurse to give that kind of information--in fact, it's against most hospital and clinic policies here. Often times, families will coerce a nurse into being told test results.
I'm not quite sure how/why I became the bad guy here. I simply attempted to point out some of the good aspects of nursing.
Do you ever leave the city? I'm curious because if you did spend any time in a small or rural hospital you would have a *very* different perspective of the nursing profession.
I grew up in a small Texas town (pop. ~800) and was an orderly at the 20-something bed hospital during my senior high-school year. This was years ago, but I do know something of the environment. In addition to my normal clinic/hospital, I've also worked in a couple small clinics/hospitals in a couple of small towns in a neighboring state.
Piss poor compensation,
I've mentioned other places that workload and safety issues are more likely the reason nurses leave their profession, not compensation--which many would agree is at least decent (meaning that more money wouldn't make the job less stressful or safer).
exponentially expanding job demands
I've been known to exaggerate too, but "exponentially"? Certainly with more documentation requirements and more patients per nurse, the job demands increase; however, this is not a phenomenon unique to the nursing staff. Other providers (MD, NP's, PA's, CNM's) are all seeing more patients/day with ever-growing documentation requirements.
condescending and frighteningly incompetent doctors
Sadly, I know this is all too prevalent, however, it's not limited to physicians. I've seen a number of incompetent people in many other fields.
micro management by administration and insurance providers...
...and with today's litigious society, no one in the medical field is immune to "micro management"
To insinuate changing jobs for those who likely have more insight into a patients condition than the attending doctor is offensive and disturbing.
I'm not quite sure where this came from so I'm uncertain how to respond.
not to become a lazy doctors' coach or an administrative paper pusher
Again, I'm not sure what the first part of that means, but believe me, the paper pushing is spread pretty heavily at all levels and is the result of:
conveying pertinent patient status history to another provider
documenting to cover one's backside (defensive documentation) in the event something bad happens and the unfortunate, inevitable finger pointing starts
documenting to "prove" to the insurance company/payor that diagnostic testing/procedures that were billed for were actually done
Interesting that you should comment on a subject which you know little about.... much harder than you could imagine...
And interesting that you feel like an authority on what I know. While I may not be a nurse, I am in the medical field and have had more than ample occasion to review and discuss nurse/support staff salaries with individual nurses, unions and management. It may not be apparent, but I am a nurse/patient advocate. Nurses on the medsurg floors where I've had patients take care of 4-6 patients (typically, sometimes less, never more) and each "team" is assigned a nurse's aide. In my particular specialty, nurses do 1:1 support (rarely 1:2) through most of their shift. I am one of the physicians who support workload based on acuity rather than patient number (though there seems to be no "agreement" on how to determine acuity and complicating things further, the ability to cope with a given acuity is determined in part on a nurse's experience and charge nurse). In clinic, it's one nurse per provider and she has no phone/triage responsibility (though she does room, obtain vitals and print off labs).
[you]...mention the Problem of "Fleeing" nurses, you balance it with the problem of difficult entrance to nursing schools...
I never meant to make any statement regarding a balance between the nursing shortage or nurses "fleeing" with the difficulty of getting into nursing school. At some point, hopefully, the shortage will lessen because we draw more people into nursing and retain those already there. My statement simply meant that people aren't being frightened out of pursuing a nursing career.
However, this isn't supposed to be a discussion of nurses nor of medical issues, it has simply progressed to that based on some statements in this sub-thread regarding some of the good things I saw about nursing careers--I believe there are many good things about nursing careers (decent salaries, career path, demand and open geography). In another reply I mentioned a few issues regarding nurse burnout and that for most who choose to leave the nursing profession, it probably didn't involve money but rather workload and patient safety.
I'm not an authority on nursing requirements nationwide and I don't believe I ever suggested otherwise. I'm sure you realize that nurses are not required to have a BS degree, and many LPN's do not. RN's are also not always required to have college degrees prior to starting nursing school. There are many "2+2" and "3+2" programs out there. The salaries I listed in my original post were not my numbers but from two freely reviewable unconnected websites. They happened to be in agreement with numbers supplied to me by one of the unions here (a large metropolitan area) so I considered them reasonably accurate... of course there will be areas and individuals significantly higher and lower. One of the disagreeing/chastising replies I saw quoted $18/hour which is also in agreement with the salary I mentioned. But again, that was not intended to be the main point of my original post.
I have left the profession for the reasons listed above. I am currently self-employed in a sales position and much happier and a hell of a lot less stressed.
I'm genuinely happy you found a career that's less stressful and makes you happy (I've often thought the same thing); hopefully, you're not too dissociated from the medical profession and you're able to make use of your medical training.
When/. does their "worst job" survey, I can think of several jobs worse than nursing (MA/orderly/janitor in a nursing home comes to mind--those people have to be saints).
Many RNs leave the profession entirely after only 2-3 years or less and many others go right into their Nurse Practitioner Studies to get out of the bullshit that exists on the unit.
I agree completely. The shortage of teachers is not limited to nursing, there's a shortage of teachers in so many fields. Teaching nurses (Nurse Educators) are beginning to earn more due to the shortage of teachers and demand for nurses.
Here's another site that gives nursing salaries: Slightly lower (about 10%) than the site I reported earlier. It gives a breakdown by setting and training level.
To be fair, I don't believe it's so much of a salary issue with nurse burnout as it is a workload and safety issue. Now, those are two huge areas of concern that very few people could rationally argue against. But/. is not the appropriate forum.
I'm sure their numbers may be way off for many folks, that's the downside to looking at charts which reflect aggregate numbers. Even seeing a range of salaries doesn't help much other than giving someone a rough idea of what the going salary "might" be for a career or geographic region.
I don't think those numbers are even close to what Washington state pays. Group Health was paying 12USD/Hour for MA's, 18USD/Hour for Nurses and 29USD/Hour for Docters.
Well, if you clicked on any of the links in my reply, you'd see they were not MY numbers, but rather the median numbers of one of the largest salary survey sites on the internet. This doesn't necessarily determine accuracy, but it gives a basis to the numbers I cited; that is, they're not my numbers but rather numbers reported by someone else. They happen to coincide with clinic payrolls and the salaries of nurses I know personally. So mark me troll if you like, but I'm only reporting published numbers that anyone can look up for themselves. And for what it's worth, $12/hour for an MA is good (more than twice minimum wage), $18/hour matches up with what I mentioned before ($18/hour ~ $36K/year, so thank you for confirming what I wrote earlier). A physician salary of $29/hour would be about the lowest in the country being roughly $58K/year. That's just about what residents (they're barely physicians) make.
Slashdot Mirror
I personally consider "jackass" as slang, and the use of it or "ass" when referring to a donkey as uneducated or used for color... just my two cents. But hey, I come from a generation that considered "shut up" as vulgar too.
I agree. While I like Stern, I think his show is indecent and is more appropriate for the more controlled access that satellite broadcast provides (for the time being). I was struck how Stern's statements about being kept out of court were third-hand information over and over again. IANAL, but I don't see how the government/FCC could prevent someone from suing them or making a big enough stink in the media to force it if such was the case. On the other hand, if Viacom was late with paperwork or through some legal requirement if they must pay legally prescribed fines before a second action can occur, that's hardly the FCC's fault.
There are many liberals who also appreciate government regulation when it comes to game/movie ratings, parental advisories, etc. It's not simply an artifact of the "right wing X-tians (sic)".
If money is being transfered out of broadcaster pockets and into the coffers of the FCC, who's fault is that? I suspect broadcasters are well versed in the various "naughty words" (Carlin's phrase, not mine) that shouldn't be broadcast. I for one am not such a fool to think that Jackson/Timberlake pulled off their stunt without any prior knowledge/approval of CBS.
When I read that the first time in TFA, I didn't presume he meant "government standardization". If Mr Powell meant "government standardization" and if you take "laizzez-faire" literally (something like "people rule" as I recall) then I think you're right, the market place (consumers) pretty much decided on their favorite hardware/software of the time among that which was available (having been there at the time myself). I'd have a hard time believing Mr Powell would make that kind of error.
And many of us think a few words, including "ass", should be kept of the public's airwaves. It's a sad state when decency has to be legislated. Do what you want with cable, satellite, and theaters, but allow me some peace of mind to know young kids aren't deluged with vulgar language before they're old enough to understand the rudiments of various social situations and the right/wrong contexts in which these words might be used if desired. Too many people don't realize the importance of this until they start having kids of their own, then they're keenly aware of parental advisories and game/movie ratings.
There are a few studies that link the nausea experienced by many people who operate poorly designed flight simulators with the small "disconnects" between seen and felt motion. The same thing happens in many videogames such as the early first person shooters.
Well, for once I did RTFA, and having lived previously in San Antonio (Texas) as well as Dallas (Texas), I've had many opportunities to dine at a couple of tower-top revolving restaurants (rotation ~1/hr). While not "exactly dizzying", it can be somewhat disconcerting to see the scenery changing minutely but perceptively. When writing the comment, I was thinking more along the terms of subtle changes over months/years of "exposure" as I'm not aware of any prior prolonged human experience like this being studied/reported... I was just curious. If nothing else, I'm sure lying in bed at night, you'd feel the machinery.
Seems like on some level, this would be extremely disorienting after a period of time. I'm sure the view is probably spectacular, but you'd probably find just one view you liked best and and be tempted to keep your "floor" stopped in that direction thus defeating the purpose of the rotation.
Glad to hear from a satisfied Vonage user. Looking at reviews over the internet, you see so many pro's and con's. I was all set to jump on VoIP when they decided to let SBC control prices on the critical internet-to-POTS connection. I was taking a step back to see how Vonage/Packet 8/et al responded pricewise.
You know, it could be that MS purchased Giant so they don't have to do their own research into the intricacies of how some spyware is installed, avoids detection, and re-inserts itself after "removal". Sometimes an hour with the book beats a week in the lab. If they'd only hired the expertise (who probably currently work for A/V companies), they might have been sued for IP theft.
Thanks for the laugh... it's what I needed after reading your parent's post.
The only link I find on Apple's website (using their search engine for DRM) gives this short blurb: iTunes does not play unprotected WMA files, but instead converts the files to the file format selected in Importing preferences. iTunes for Windows cannot import or play WMA files that are protected by Windows Media Digital Rights Management (DRM).
So, just how is one supposed to learn about other DRM restrictions? And is it fair to change things after a purchase? For example, the above restriction would seem to eliminate WalMart.Com (DRM'd) as a song source.
While I agree with your statement that Apple is doing nothing morally, legally, technically wrong; the question of ethics is something else. I don't own an iPod, but I presume once you purchase one and open the box, there's a pamphlet inside mentioning specifications, ie, what the player will/won't play. The cya phrase of, "specifications subject to change without notice", hardly seems "ethical" in any context.
My reason to upgrade was the availability of Office 2K3 for nearly free (something like $70 for all of Word/Access/Excel/ InfoPath/Outlook/ Viso/Publisher together) through a corporate-partnership (?) program between my employer and MS. Previously I had gotten my copies of Office at various computer shows cheaply but the vendor eventually quit coming to the shows.
I can see the usefulness of a tablet PC in a medical clinic setting when a healthcare provider is interviewing a patient. As it is now, it's common to have a desktop in the examination room to lookup test results. It would be nice to have something more portable with existing capabilities (ie, wireless) and an application (and some clinics do) where you would have a checklist (at a bare minimum) of items to mark yes/no during the patient's history taking. The current hardware doesn't seem to be portable/rugged/usable enough just yet. PDA's (mostly Palm-based around here) are everywhere now, but not tablet computers.
Hey, I remember that guy from college, he taught freshman calculus and wore the same dirty shirt everyday for the first half of the semester (after which I dropped). Looked sort of like Einstein, but could not communicate an idea or explain a concept to save his life. I'm sure many of us have had instructors like that.
Good, balanced, open-minded post. Wish I had points to give you.
But then again, what do I know, by /. standards I'm an ol'timer... but then, so is anyone out of high school.
One of the the nice things about using the VHS tapes back in mid-1980s or so, was their ~5GB capacity and easy storage. The company I worked for had a large fireproof vault (~4ft x 3ft x 8ft) inside a huge Faraday cage (40ft x 40ft) into which the company's backups were kept. That would have been impossible to do with disk drives then, but only mildly inconvenient now with hot-swappable drives. I read somewhere that a well-kept disk drive should last about 20 years on the shelf.
Actually, a "standard" cassette recorder was quite often used in the early TRS80 / Apple / SwTPC / Altair days for software distribution and data recording. The larger businesses using minicomputers (VAX and such) used 9-track magnetic tape drives and 2400 foot tapes at 800 or 1600bpi, then 6250 bpi (the latter, in GCR format, was very forgiving of errors as it had built in redundancy). However, with several hundred megabytes (circa 1970's-1980's) to save, this required several tape changes and an "operator" for system backups. Better equipped shops had VHS data records (though they never really caught on so far as I know). As I recall, they stored about 5GB per standard VHS tape. Heaven forbid if an error occurred on the tape as they weren't very forgiving owing to the whole concept of where to place the TOC.
Aww, give me a little credit. If you've read ANY of my other posts in this thread, you already know I'm a health care professional with more than a casual background in nursing issues.
I sense you're angry and bitter, however the statements I made are correct to the best of my knowledge and experience. Yours and your wife's mileage may vary of course.
I'll try to address some points you raised. Most nurses work an 8 hour shift, generally 7am-3pm, 3pm-11pm, or 11pm-7am. That's pretty standard, however, there are places that experiment with different hours including 4 x 10 hour or 3 x 12 hour shifts to allow nurses an extra day off while still approximating a 40-hour work week. The nurses I've known (several hundred by now) try to get their charting done by end of shift but there's usually notes, clean up, and sign-out that takes an extra 30 minutes. The hospitals and clinics where I've worked always allowed at least 30 minutes for lunch/dinner. To say otherwise would really be exaggerating or a very unusual circumstance. Federal and state law for non-salaried employees governs this.
Staffing levels do "suck" but there's a concerted effort to reduce it. I'm not sure what part of my statement regarding the issues of workload and safety you didn't understand. I've mentioned that several times as one of the major reasons why nurses dislike their jobs. From the sounds of your story, it doesn't appear that any amount of money would have kept your wife interested in nursing (a point I've made in other posts too).
Sadly, anyone who enters the medical profession is aware of the risk of infectious diseases. A person knows that going into the profession and it's reiterated in training and on the job over and over again. The risk is probably no higher for nurses than other providers depending on the specialty of each. As you know, for privacy reasons, patients can't currently be tested for many diseases without their knowledge and consent. This most importantly includes HIV. It would be very reassuring to know you were only taking care of healthy people (no TB, Hep C, HIV, etc), but then why would they be at the hospital or clinic? Surgeons as well as nurses and other providers, including administrative staff confront these risks daily. The standard philosophy is to treat everyone as if they have a communicable disease ("universal precautions"). Some people forget that or get sloppy or accidents simply happen. That's just life and no amount of up-front knowledge will eliminate the risk completely.
It's too bad your wife wasn't able to pursue becoming a lactation consultant, those that I work with love their jobs. Years ago, one didn't really need any sort of credentials to be called a lactation consultant; however, these day that's changing. Along the same thought, I only mentioned the career path of nurses to point out that it's not a "dead-end job" for many who want to (and can) change their practice. I certainly DID NOT mean to imply, "If they don't like their jobs, they should change."
As far as giving bad news, myself and most of the colleagues I know deliver the news themselves because there are the inevitable questions that nurses would simply defer anyways. So yes, I've had to tell many patients extrodinarily tragic news. In the geographic area where I practice, it's very uncommon for a nurse to give that kind of information--in fact, it's against most hospital and clinic policies here. Often times, families will coerce a nurse into being told test results.
I'm not quite sure how/why I became the bad guy here. I simply attempted to point out some of the good aspects of nursing.
I grew up in a small Texas town (pop. ~800) and was an orderly at the 20-something bed hospital during my senior high-school year. This was years ago, but I do know something of the environment. In addition to my normal clinic/hospital, I've also worked in a couple small clinics/hospitals in a couple of small towns in a neighboring state.
Piss poor compensation,
I've mentioned other places that workload and safety issues are more likely the reason nurses leave their profession, not compensation--which many would agree is at least decent (meaning that more money wouldn't make the job less stressful or safer).
exponentially expanding job demands
I've been known to exaggerate too, but "exponentially"? Certainly with more documentation requirements and more patients per nurse, the job demands increase; however, this is not a phenomenon unique to the nursing staff. Other providers (MD, NP's, PA's, CNM's) are all seeing more patients/day with ever-growing documentation requirements.
condescending and frighteningly incompetent doctors
Sadly, I know this is all too prevalent, however, it's not limited to physicians. I've seen a number of incompetent people in many other fields.
micro management by administration and insurance providers...
To insinuate changing jobs for those who likely have more insight into a patients condition than the attending doctor is offensive and disturbing.
I'm not quite sure where this came from so I'm uncertain how to respond.
not to become a lazy doctors' coach or an administrative paper pusher
Again, I'm not sure what the first part of that means, but believe me, the paper pushing is spread pretty heavily at all levels and is the result of:
conveying pertinent patient status history to another provider
documenting to cover one's backside (defensive documentation) in the event something bad happens and the unfortunate, inevitable finger pointing starts
documenting to "prove" to the insurance company/payor that diagnostic testing/procedures that were billed for were actually done
And interesting that you feel like an authority on what I know. While I may not be a nurse, I am in the medical field and have had more than ample occasion to review and discuss nurse/support staff salaries with individual nurses, unions and management. It may not be apparent, but I am a nurse/patient advocate. Nurses on the medsurg floors where I've had patients take care of 4-6 patients (typically, sometimes less, never more) and each "team" is assigned a nurse's aide. In my particular specialty, nurses do 1:1 support (rarely 1:2) through most of their shift. I am one of the physicians who support workload based on acuity rather than patient number (though there seems to be no "agreement" on how to determine acuity and complicating things further, the ability to cope with a given acuity is determined in part on a nurse's experience and charge nurse). In clinic, it's one nurse per provider and she has no phone/triage responsibility (though she does room, obtain vitals and print off labs).
[you]...mention the Problem of "Fleeing" nurses, you balance it with the problem of difficult entrance to nursing schools...
I never meant to make any statement regarding a balance between the nursing shortage or nurses "fleeing" with the difficulty of getting into nursing school. At some point, hopefully, the shortage will lessen because we draw more people into nursing and retain those already there. My statement simply meant that people aren't being frightened out of pursuing a nursing career.
However, this isn't supposed to be a discussion of nurses nor of medical issues, it has simply progressed to that based on some statements in this sub-thread regarding some of the good things I saw about nursing careers--I believe there are many good things about nursing careers (decent salaries, career path, demand and open geography). In another reply I mentioned a few issues regarding nurse burnout and that for most who choose to leave the nursing profession, it probably didn't involve money but rather workload and patient safety.
I'm not an authority on nursing requirements nationwide and I don't believe I ever suggested otherwise. I'm sure you realize that nurses are not required to have a BS degree, and many LPN's do not. RN's are also not always required to have college degrees prior to starting nursing school. There are many "2+2" and "3+2" programs out there. The salaries I listed in my original post were not my numbers but from two freely reviewable unconnected websites. They happened to be in agreement with numbers supplied to me by one of the unions here (a large metropolitan area) so I considered them reasonably accurate... of course there will be areas and individuals significantly higher and lower. One of the disagreeing/chastising replies I saw quoted $18/hour which is also in agreement with the salary I mentioned. But again, that was not intended to be the main point of my original post.
I have left the profession for the reasons listed above. I am currently self-employed in a sales position and much happier and a hell of a lot less stressed.
I'm genuinely happy you found a career that's less stressful and makes you happy (I've often thought the same thing); hopefully, you're not too dissociated from the medical profession and you're able to make use of your medical training.
When /. does their "worst job" survey, I can think of several jobs worse than nursing (MA/orderly/janitor in a nursing home comes to mind--those people have to be saints).
Many RNs leave the profession entirely after only 2-3 years or less and many others go right into their Nurse Practitioner Studies to get out of the bullshit that exists on the unit.
Of course this is
Here's another site that gives nursing salaries: Slightly lower (about 10%) than the site I reported earlier. It gives a breakdown by setting and training level.
To be fair, I don't believe it's so much of a salary issue with nurse burnout as it is a workload and safety issue. Now, those are two huge areas of concern that very few people could rationally argue against. But /. is not the appropriate forum.
I'm sure their numbers may be way off for many folks, that's the downside to looking at charts which reflect aggregate numbers. Even seeing a range of salaries doesn't help much other than giving someone a rough idea of what the going salary "might" be for a career or geographic region.
Well, if you clicked on any of the links in my reply, you'd see they were not MY numbers, but rather the median numbers of one of the largest salary survey sites on the internet. This doesn't necessarily determine accuracy, but it gives a basis to the numbers I cited; that is, they're not my numbers but rather numbers reported by someone else. They happen to coincide with clinic payrolls and the salaries of nurses I know personally. So mark me troll if you like, but I'm only reporting published numbers that anyone can look up for themselves. And for what it's worth, $12/hour for an MA is good (more than twice minimum wage), $18/hour matches up with what I mentioned before ($18/hour ~ $36K/year, so thank you for confirming what I wrote earlier). A physician salary of $29/hour would be about the lowest in the country being roughly $58K/year. That's just about what residents (they're barely physicians) make.