I’m in my final semester of nursing school. My classmates and I are in our mid to late 20’s. The class we are taking right now is called leadership and transition into the workplace, which is supposed to teach us about working in a professional nursing setting.
So yesterday, my older professor was talking about unions and if they’re necessary or not. This guy in the back is like “with all the bad things that are going on, who wouldn’t want to be part of a union?” She looked taken aback
Then my professor talks about how travel nurses are making an obscene amount of money and since hospitals are employing them to make up for the nursing shortage, non-travel hospital nurses are unable to get raises. She literally said “travel nurses are taking money from the hospital” as if they’re stealing. So hospital nurses end up leaving to become travel nurses to make more money, and it just gets worse for hospital nurses who stay. This girl in the class was like “just pay the hospital nurses more and this wouldn’t be a problem” and a few more classmates agreed with her. Again, our professor just looked so surprised
Our professor also talked about how a lot of nurses are working 60 hours a week because of the shortage. Another girl was like “but we can say no, right?” asking if we can refuse the additional hours we are assigned. Multiple people chime in and say they’re not planning on working over 40 hours.
I’m so surprised and excited to hear concepts on this sub be mentioned in my classroom. I never thought I’d hear these things from people close to me. It shows me that our thoughts are not radical and that change is coming in my lifetime