Weird letter

[LuvOrlando]

I'm sure all options are on the table except the ones that cost a lot of money.

Seems that way.

I always thought we were this, maybe not, maybe there is a golden calf being molded somewhere as we speak... sigh.

The New Colossus

The New Colossus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

[dez1978]

The hospital system in my area has a psychiatric facility

Those providers there still have to deal with being verbally and physically assaulted. And most of those hospitals are very short term. Like a few days. There are very few places for mentally ill people to get treatment until they commit a crime. Hospitals usually provide immediate care like if someone is suicidal. But for those who are schizophrenic for example, they’d medicate the immediate symptoms and send them on their way with instructions to follow up with their regular provider but many people don’t have a regular provider or anyone to help them get care. Private hospitals who might provide long term care are cost prohibitive for most people. State run facilities (at least in my state) will only take patients with a court order bc they have committed a crime and incompetent to stand trial and are trying to get them competent or found permanently incompetent/ngri. There are 3 of those totaling about 400 beds with a wait list of a year. So there are ppl sitting in jail for a year waiting to be admitted.

I know all of that not directly related to the original post. But just to point out that there really aren’t that many places for mentally ill people to go so they end up in the ER over and over. So if they can refuse treatment bc the patient is combative where do they go?

 

[LuvOrlando]

Why is it unreasonable for hospitals to be expected to bring on staff to deal with this, if staff need more pay and better conditions, don't they already have unions ? I just don't get giving these businesses a pass, hop-scotching over the issue and sliding to the conclusion. We are talking about human beings. I just can't get onboard & that's ok, but I dissent, there are solutions and maybe not mine some somewhere they exist.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Why is it unreasonable for hospitals to be expected to bring on staff to deal with this, if staff need more pay and better conditions, don't they already have unions ? I just don't get giving these businesses a pass, hop-scotching over the issue and sliding to the conclusion. We are talking about human beings. I just can't get onboard & that's ok, but I dissent, there are solutions and maybe not mine some somewhere they exist.

Under normal conditions it can be hard to fill staff at any place of business but with the profession you are talking about it has a high burnout rate for a reason and while pay and better working conditions are something to be desired and should just be a given it's not the be it all either.

When I was at the insurance call center the usual timeframe to do that job was about a year to a year and a half because being on the phone all day long, getting yelled at for things that are not under your control and dealing with all sorts of stuff leads to easy burn out.

Truckers can be another profession with a higher burnout rate.

In an ideal world you could hire a ton of staff and it would be easy but just as you say we are talking about human beings we are also talking about the staff being human beings too. It's trying to employ a compassionate nature on the subject of care for people while also seeing how difficult it can be on the staffing side as well. It's really a hard position to be in. Unfortunately with the pandemic it's made the profession even less desirable to get into, not unlike several other industries such as teaching, health leaders (talking about even lower level county government health leaders) and more.

 

[PollyannaMom]

...if staff need more pay and better conditions, don't they already have unions ?

And if those unions went on strike to get better pay and better working conditions, how would you feel about all the people not getting care then?

I feel like we'd all just be on a slightly different thread.

The truth is, the solutions aren't easy. Do we need more mental health care facilities? - of course. But years ago, when we had them, people decided it wasn't right to lock people up in institutions, and they closed them. - We cycle back and forth from one difficult situation to the other because it's messy no matter what we try.

 

[seshat0120]

Why is it unreasonable for hospitals to be expected to bring on staff to deal with this, if staff need more pay and better conditions, don't they already have unions ? I just don't get giving these businesses a pass, hop-scotching over the issue and sliding to the conclusion. We are talking about human beings. I just can't get onboard & that's ok, but I dissent, there are solutions and maybe not mine some somewhere they exist.

How do you expect them to just bring on staff if there's already a shortage? It seems the "solution" is to just throw money at the problem...just pay them more. There reaches a point where, no matter how good the salary, people are not going to want to stay in a position where they're constantly having to deal with verbal and sometimes physical abuse.

I believe you're looking for a tempest in a teapot with the MGB's Patient Code of Conduct. You seem to have made up your mind that they're going to deny care no matter what the reason for a person's bad behavior. It doesn't seem that you're willing to credit medical professionals as being able to distinguish when a person is non compos mentis and not responsible for their behavior and when they are compos mentis, responsible for their behavior and just being a horrible person.

I was at the ER over the summer with my sister. In the five+ hours we were in one of the ER cubicles (and those curtains don's afford a lot of privacy), there was a steady stream of patients and the visitor that was allowed back with them brought in that were not very cooperative. Some were due to substance abuse and others were just downright rude. It got to the point that one of the visitors had to be kicked out because he and his brother (who he was there with) almost came to blows. After a couple of hours of this, I overheard one nurse saying that he was fed up with it, that he couldn't deal with this kind of behavior anymore. That is the point nursing staff is getting to. But, by all means, let's not have some kind of code of conduct. Let's keep letting people do and say whatever they want and if it drives everyone away from nursing...oh well. We can all just take care of ourselves.

 

[LuvOrlando]

How do you expect them to just bring on staff if there's already a shortage? It seems the "solution" is to just throw money at the problem...just pay them more. There reaches a point where, no matter how good the salary, people are not going to want to stay in a position where they're constantly having to deal with verbal and sometimes physical abuse.

Worker shortages are a fallacy. The idea of workforce shortages is a complete fallacy that is offered as an explanation for poor working conditions when employers don't want to accept a shift towards the employees benefit. If I offer my kids $50 to take out the trash there would be a race, I'd have 2 takers, but, if I offer a brownie and maybe it has a pile fur-ball in it and no-one shows up is there a shortage or poor compensation. I would offer the compensation does not match the task.

The only shortages that exist are shortages of hardworking decent people willing to do monumental heart-wrenching work for pennies while athletes make millions a year, it's football season and all week most people are reminded about how special they ain't, it's tough to ignore.

If healthcare workers & teachers etc were to be paid decent wages with appropriate supports, enough to absorb life and ensure safety, there would be people lined out the door. It is the operation of supply and demand where supply shrinks as benefit shrinks and supply grows as benefit grows. If Food A price goes up fewer people will buy and similarly, if wages go down, fewer people will sell their effort. The caveat shows in variables, such as where people will endure less $ with better benefits (such as civil workers with pension & great med coverage) or maybe a prestigious job that could spark a better next step (non paid college internships or working for a big name) and also similarly, people will pay more if there is a holiday in play or something else extra that tips the scales towards purchasing.

With workers, they can be paid more or their experiences can be improved as a form of added benefit, but asking more of them and paying less does not result in a shortage the way most people are thinking.

 

[Wiltony]

Why is it unreasonable for hospitals to be expected to bring on staff to deal with this, if staff need more pay and better conditions, don't they already have unions ? I just don't get giving these businesses a pass, hop-scotching over the issue and sliding to the conclusion. We are talking about human beings. I just can't get onboard & that's ok, but I dissent, there are solutions and maybe not mine some somewhere they exist.

Holy crap, I don't mean to be rude, but this really comes off as a cold, tone-deaf statement. I think I appreciate what you're trying to say, but what you don't realize is that we are reading it as if you're saying, "nurses need to just suck it up and take it" rather than there being any expectation of change in behavior on the part of the patient. When you say "these hospitals" and "these businesses" you're shrouding the fact that you're really saying "these nurses" and "these CNAs." Yes, there is a serious problem with healthcare labor and hospital administration from a profit motive that needs to be addressed, but that doesn't eliminate the fact that patient entitlement/behavior needs to drastically change.

Hospitals and other medical facilities should be for strictly medical-related treatment and care, but they are increasingly becoming little "resorts" where inpatients check-in and then get super entitled and start to treat their nurses and CNAs as their own personal butlers or maids, and then start to freak out when they don't get adequately doted upon. What is worse, when they don't get the expected "care," they start to get rude and abusive, and start threatening "formal complaints." Then these trivial complaints then take the form of very serious grievances surrounding subjects such as bigotry, equality, racism, fat-shaming, etc. and they use these important institutional healthcare equality tools as leverage to ensure they better dang-well get their warm blanket and extra pudding cup, or else! It is this culture that needs to be squelched! Get your medical needs addressed, and then please get the heck out of that bed to make room for the next person.

 

[LuvOrlando]

Holy crap, I don't mean to be rude, but this really comes off as a cold, tone-deaf statement. I think I appreciate what you're trying to say, but what you don't realize is that we are reading it as if you're saying, "nurses need to just suck it up and take it" rather than there being any expectation of change in behavior on the part of the patient. When you say "these hospitals" and "these businesses" you're shrouding the fact that you're really saying "these nurses" and "these CNAs." Yes, there is a serious problem with healthcare labor and hospital administration from a profit motive that needs to be addressed, but that doesn't eliminate the fact that patient entitlement/behavior needs to drastically change.

Hospitals and other medical facilities should be for strictly medical-related treatment and care, but they are increasingly becoming little "resorts" where inpatients check-in and then get super entitled and start to treat their nurses and CNAs as their own personal butlers or maids, and then start to freak out when they don't get adequately doted upon. What is worse, when they don't get the expected "care," they start to get rude and abusive, and start threatening "formal complaints." Then these trivial complaints then take the form of very serious grievances surrounding subjects such as bigotry, equality, racism, fat-shaming, etc. and they use these important institutional healthcare equality tools as leverage to ensure they better dang-well get their warm blanket and extra pudding cup, or else! It is this culture that needs to be squelched! Get your medical needs addressed, and then please get the heck out of that bed to make room for the next person.

Nope, never have I once ever said that, the institutions need to change their recipe for care. If you truly believe that people with cognitive issues are well cared for I am afraid we will never see eye to eye.

 

[Wiltony]

Worker shortages are a fallacy. The idea of workforce shortages is a complete fallacy that is offered as an explanation for poor working conditions when employers don't want to accept a shift towards the employees benefit. If I offer my kids $50 to take out the trash there would be a race, I'd have 2 takers, but, if I offer a brownie and maybe it has a pile fur-ball in it and no-one shows up is there a shortage or poor compensation. I would offer the compensation does not match the task.

The only shortages that exist are shortages of hardworking decent people willing to do monumental heart-wrenching work for pennies while athletes make millions a year, it's football season and all week most people are reminded about how special they ain't, it's tough to ignore.

If healthcare workers & teachers etc were to be paid decent wages with appropriate supports, enough to absorb life and ensure safety, there would be people lined out the door. It is the operation of supply and demand where supply shrinks as benefit shrinks and supply grows as benefit grows. If Food A price goes up fewer people will buy and similarly, if wages go down, fewer people will sell their effort. The caveat shows in variables, such as where people will endure less $ with better benefits (such as civil workers with pension & great med coverage) or maybe a prestigious job that could spark a better next step (non paid college internships or working for a big name) and also similarly, people will pay more if there is a holiday in play or something else extra that tips the scales towards purchasing.

With workers, they can be paid more or their experiences can be improved as a form of added benefit, but asking more of them and paying less does not result in a shortage the way most people are thinking.

You know, you could just say, "Hospitals should pay nurses and caregivers more, which they deserve and would also help alleviate shortages" and you'd hit the mark! But you've wrapped this argument in "and taking abuse is part of the job" which misses it.

 

[LuvOrlando]

You know, you could just say, "Hospitals should pay nurses and caregivers more, which they deserve and would also help alleviate shortages" and you'd hit the mark! But you've wrapped this argument in "and taking abuse is part of the job" which misses it.

I never ever said that, not once, in fact read my first post where I advocate for more mental health caregivers as support.

It is not in my control if you read other people's interpretations of my views and take them to be my own, that is not on me.

 

[LuvOrlando]

And if those unions went on strike to get better pay and better working conditions, how would you feel about all the people not getting care then?

I feel like we'd all just be on a slightly different thread.

The truth is, the solutions aren't easy. Do we need more mental health care facilities? - of course. But years ago, when we had them, people decided it wasn't right to lock people up in institutions, and they closed them. - We cycle back and forth from one difficult situation to the other because it's messy no matter what we try.

I doubt that would happen, schools rarely strike as it is an essential service, the institutions usually bend and they cooperate.

The mental health facilities of long ago were horrendous places where nuisance people were locked away to suffer, as long as they weren't a bother. I don't think people knew this but it is what happened. Most of these places were closed due to monsterous conditions. Now we just have these same people suffering abuse cold and alone on the streets, not so sure this is an improvement.

I simply don't accept that there is no better option, at least I hope not because if we just leave the substance abuse and homelessness that follow cognitive impairment to fester, as a society, we are going to be faced with the consequences and those consequences terrify me. I'm in no position to change things but it does trouble me to see where things are headed.

Think this is really bugging me because it's Veterans Day and I am aware how many Veterans fall into this category...

 

[Wiltony]

I doubt that would happen, schools rarely strike as it is an essential service, the institutions usually bend and they cooperate.

The mental health facilities of long ago were horrendous places where nuisance people were locked away to suffer, as long as they weren't a bother. I don't think people knew this but it is what happened. Most of these places were closed due to monsterous conditions. Now we just have these same people suffering abuse cold and alone on the streets, not so sure this is an improvement.

I simply don't accept that there is no better option, at least I hope not because if we just leave the substance abuse and homelessness that follow cognitive impairment to fester, as a society, we are going to be faced with the consequences and those consequences terrify me. I'm in no position to change things but it does trouble me to see where things are headed.

Think this is really bugging me because it's Veterans Day and I am aware how many Veterans fall into this category...

Just to help alleviate your frustration and extend an olive branch, I (as well as most of us, I presume) are absolutely supportive of better care for needy patients (including veterans), especially those suffering from mental issues resulting in potential volatile behavior. I am strongly against giving any leeway for potential abuse to nurses, as you can tell, and would also support higher wages and additional resources to hire more staff and put in place strategies and practices to help deal with these volatile behaviors.

So you see, we're really on the same side for like 95% of this. I just think your focus is more about care for mental health, while my focus was more about protecting nurses. And those aren't incompatible when it comes down to it.

Cheers!

 

[DLgal]

I doubt that would happen, schools rarely strike as it is an essential service, the institutions usually bend and they cooperate.

The mental health facilities of long ago were horrendous places where nuisance people were locked away to suffer, as long as they weren't a bother. I don't think people knew this but it is what happened. Most of these places were closed due to monsterous conditions. Now we just have these same people suffering abuse cold and alone on the streets, not so sure this is an improvement.

I simply don't accept that there is no better option, at least I hope not because if we just leave the substance abuse and homelessness that follow cognitive impairment to fester, as a society, we are going to be faced with the consequences and those consequences terrify me. I'm in no position to change things but it does trouble me to see where things are headed.

Think this is really bugging me because it's Veterans Day and I am aware how many Veterans fall into this category...

Respectfully, you seem to be missing this this is not about punishing cognitively impaired individuals in need of medical help. It seems very clearly aimed at entitled jerks who abuse healthcare workers. Why is it so hard for you to understand, the same type of people who scream at and insult retail workers, restaurant workers, Disney CMs, etc ALSO behave that way towards Healthcare workers in hospitals. These caregivers routinely get spit on, cussed out, physically assaulted, etc by REGULAR PEOPLE who have absolutely NO medical reason for their behavior. I have seen it in the ER. THESE are the patients that this policy is written for.

If you can just give them the benefit of the doubt here and trust that this policy will not be used against people in mental health crises, you might realize this is an important policy to have in place for the protection of our health care workers. Honestly, its no different than the policy that many businesses have that gives them the right to refuse service to anyone they choose for any reason.

 

[PollyannaMom]

The mental health facilities of long ago were horrendous places where nuisance people were locked away to suffer, as long as they weren't a bother. I don't think people knew this but it is what happened. Most of these places were closed due to monsterous conditions. Now we just have these same people suffering abuse cold and alone on the streets, not so sure this is an improvement.

I agree that it's not. And I think we could do a lot better with today's available technology - both in monitoring of conditions and in patient quality of life. But staffing and cost would still be issues.

 

[Karin1984]

This is not just a US politics discussion a lot of countries face a shortage in medical staff. Everyone needs more money, but even if there was, the work is hard and not always the most grateful work.

Like teaching, medical staff often do it because they love taking care of people. Teachers have a passion, even when it pays badly.

Are these industries you want people who are in it just for the money?

 

[EilonwyWanderer]

I think it's a very problematic stance that if you make X amount of money you then are required to put up with racist/sexist comments and violence. That should just be hard-stop not tolerated by anyone.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

This is not just a US politics discussion a lot of countries face a shortage in medical staff. Everyone needs more money, but even if there was, the work is hard and not always the most grateful work.

Like teaching, medical staff often do it because they love taking care of people. Teachers have a passion, even when it pays badly.

Are these industries you want people who are in it just for the money?

I've said it a lot but when speaking about employment in general there's a certain level you're willing to deal with (although verbal and physical assault should never be you're just willing to deal with) when the work environment can counteract that. The current work environment for many lessens this ability to do this.

Everyone needs income that adjusts over time (in which we know some professions have been chronically underpaid which is very important to the conversation). On the other end some professions get a pay structure commiserate of the dangers of the job and we didn't necessarily view (well I'd say until the pandemic) teaching and medical care, trucking, etc as some of these professions as ones that should get it but I think we can make a good case for this being the case as time has gone on.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Worker shortages are a fallacy. The idea of workforce shortages is a complete fallacy that is offered as an explanation for poor working conditions when employers don't want to accept a shift towards the employees benefit. If I offer my kids $50 to take out the trash there would be a race, I'd have 2 takers, but, if I offer a brownie and maybe it has a pile fur-ball in it and no-one shows up is there a shortage or poor compensation. I would offer the compensation does not match the task.

Using your analogy: You offer your kids $50 to take out the trash, and they rush in and say, “Sign me up!” Easy money, right? So they start the job, but quickly realize the trash has garbage in it. It stinks so bad when they move it they start to gag and vomit. Nonetheless, they try to finish the job. Then one of the bags breaks and putrid contents spill all over the floor, which you expect will be cleaned up (for that kind of money). Wait! Are those maggots? OMG! [barf again] Once they gather their wits, they reluctantly begin to clean - but, oops, something sharp was in the garbage and one just got stuck with it; now he’s bleeding. Will this require an ER visit? Will it get infected? Ugh! The other one can’t take it any more and runs off, not to be seen at the “job site” again. One is left, literally, holding the bag. What’s he going to say to you next time you want him to take out your trash? ”You can’t pay me enough to do that job!”

And that is how a lot of people feel right now.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I also strongly agree with others who say this will likely primarily affect

the same type of people who scream at and insult retail workers, restaurant workers, Disney CMs, etc ALSO behave that way towards Healthcare workers in hospitals. These caregivers routinely get spit on, cussed out, physically assaulted, etc by REGULAR PEOPLE who have absolutely NO medical reason for their behavior. I have seen it in the ER. THESE are the patients that this policy is written for.