jetbluedog
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2003
- Posts
- 176
My girlfriend is a NURSE. I am so glad. I am quiting my regional job with Eagle next month, going to get a 2 year nursing degree and make a REAL living. I will have enough income to go buy a single-engine next year and fly all I want to myself without all THE BS IN REGIONAL AIRLINE FLYING!! Our combined salaries will be in excess of $120,000 a year. (This is my girlfriend in the article below!!)
Hospitals Lure Nurses
by V. DION HAYNES INGLEWOOD, Calif. - (KRT) - Agnes Kambe had her choice of such prizes as a Toyota Highlander SUV, a trip to the Bahamas, a camera or a mountain bike. Instead, she opted for what she considers the jackpot - $15,000 - and won it twice.
Kambe isn't a game show contestant - she's a nurse.
Historically high shortages in the nursing profession are creating a give-away frenzy among hospitals. While the faltering economy has halted sign-on incentives practically everywhere else, hospitals are wooing nurses with offers of vacations, vehicles, massages, concierge services, free tuition for themselves and their kids and bonuses of up to $20,000.
"I was so excited to get the bonus. What other job but nursing is offering that?" asked Kambe, 23, who was recently hired to work in the cardiac unit at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital in Inglewood, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb.
Last year, she received a $10,000 sign-on bonus from another hospital. Though other hospitals around the country were dangling trips and trucks to induce nurses to switch jobs, Kambe was lured by Freeman Memorial's offer of a $15,000 bonus, a free 12-week training program and paid tuition to return to school to earn an advanced degree in nursing.
"The economy is bad, going down the toilet. But people aren't going to stop getting sick," she said.
The incentives offer a bright spot for a profession that has been battered in recent years by an exodus stemming from increased patient loads and frequent, forced overtime. One study released last year by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations asserted that the "impending crisis in nurse staffing has the potential to impact the health and security of our society" if steps are not taken to reverse the problem.
Indeed, experts say the shortage has increased nurse response time to patients and caused hospitals to turn away sick people because there are not enough nurses to care for them. A study last year in The Journal of the American Medical Association asserted that patient mortality increases by 7 percent whenever a nurse is forced to care for more than five patients.
The shortage is expected to dramatically worsen over the next 20 years, a forecast that prompted legislation in Congress. The Senate recently passed an amendment adding $50 million to the year-old Nurse Reinvestment Act, boosting funding to $213 million. The act finances scholarships and repays student loans for nurses who work in areas with critical shortages.
Currently, 1.89 million nurses are working full time, but an additional 110,000 are needed, according to a 2002 study by the Department of Health and Human Services. By 2020, if current trends continue, nearly 3 million nurses will be needed but only 2 million will be available.
