Adurentibus Spina wrote:Too much "management" and too little actual pay/training for nurses is probably a pretty big factor here. Nurses are paid terribly, and not particularly knowledgeable outside of their everyday tasks.
Creep addressed the pay aspect (and the vast majority in the US are Union repped as well and get great benefits) so I won't go into that, but as far as training, there's some pretty basic issues of hospital/patient sanitation and hygiene regarding a patient with the obvious virus symptoms Duncan had that were apparently overlooked or ignored especially in the first couple days he was admitted. And those are standard things done without a person without an Ebola diagnosis that anyone who trains for that job would know. But honestly, I agree it isn't all on the nurses to implement and follow the protocol that was required, it's up to management and in this case, the CDC to lay down the law. That wasn't done and still hasn't been done on a national level yet.
And it's just been mentioned this afternoon, apparently the 2nd nurse now infected knew enough about the risks and possibility of being infected that she actually called the CDC when she apparently started developing fever and maybe other symptoms several times asking if it was ok to fly on a commercial airliner (back to Texas) mentioning she was one of Duncan's nurses. Whoever she talked to at the CDC said "sure, you're ok to fly."
The BLS reports the median salary for a registered nurse was $65,470 in 2012. The best-paid 10 percent of RNs made more than $94,720, while the bottom 10 percent earned less than $45,040. In 2012, the highest median salaries were earned by nurses working in government, hospitals and home health care.
compared to the average
The median annual earnings for full-time, year-round women workers in 2012 was $37,791
There are a couple of reasons why I said what I said. It's one of those "Good for women" jobs, like pharmacist, where the average is higher than the gender average, and in the case of RNs, even higher than the national average.
But the numbers you quote above are for RNs. Were these women RNs or LPNs?
For example, an LPN may complete an LPN to RN education program to become a registered nurse. Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses. The median annual wage for licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses was $41,540 in May 2012.
Even if they were RNs, there's a question of whether the compensation for RNs (especially ones working on cases like infectious deadly rare diseases) is equitable relative to other similarly dangerous jobs that aren't mostly women.
Having looked into it further, these women are likely all RNs with special certifications... uh... fuck... yeah they really ought to know better.
