A current poll on patient load in NL's Forum makes me wonder:  don't nurses realize that many of them are working in sweat shops?

   Sound like an exaggeration? Consider, for one matter, that nurses and practically every working stiff in the nation has earnings that have been flat for decades, at least since the early 1970s. Wage-earners typically get increases at the beginning of each new year, but the increases don't begin to cover the rising costs of food, shelter, clothes, medicine, education, health insurance, hospitalization, taxes, car prices, gasoline, car maintenance, and on and on. Consider also that a nurse's work tends to be more dangerous than many other occupations. Nurses that work in hospitals, for instance, work in an environment that experts on infectious disease claim is the most dangerous of breeding grounds for pathogens. Of course, nurses also expose themselves almost daily to blood-borne pathogens such as hepatitis C, HIV, and STDs. They are second only to construction workers for risk of back injury. And many nurses must at least occasionally deal with violent patients. Consider, lastly, that many nurses work long hours. Hospital nurses, for instance, often work 12-hour shifts. A great many others complain of seldom having time to take state-mandated break times and lunch periods. And a great many others complain of routinely being physically, and sometimes mentally whipped at the end of shifts.

   thefreedictionary.com defines "sweat shop" as  "a shop or factory  in which employees work long hours at low wages under poor conditions."

   Of course, you might more or less reasonably argue that nurses who don't care to be patsies for hospitals or other health care organizations can find themselves a safer, less demanding, more profitable line of work. But one big problem with such a position is that it also works to the detriment of  the public, in particular people who can't choose other another course--including the chronically ill, the mentally ill, and the acutely ill (such as people who have just suffered trauma, a heart attack, or a stroke). Imagine, for instance, that the night your sweetheart or your infant or your father suffers a mishap, the only available bed is in a unit that is understaffed, or worse, there are no beds available nearby--the victim must remain in transit until something opens up for God knows how much longer or how many more miles distant.

   Moreover, if you happen to be a doormat for one health care organization or another, why not improve matters for yourself and the public? Even as you receive better pay and more agreeable working conditions, the public will be better served. Why not organize? Of course, organizing may mean forming a union to some nurses, and for some nurses, a union might be of some help. But it  can also mean joining an activist organization, such as NNOC, National Nurses Organizing Committee. I propose trying further measures. For one, organizations of nurses might align themselves occasionally on some issues with other organizations, say, for instance, with VFW, or AARP. For another, nurses should begin appealing directly to the public, such as thru newspapers, TV, and the web.

   There are more means available now to change aspects of health care or whatever-else-the-devil-you-care-to-challenge than ever before. Unfortunately, there also seems to be less and less participants working to bring about changes. Ironically, if many people chose to work together to pressure our institutions, they could improve matters relatively quickly.

    Will you continue to choose inertia and the status quo? I wonder if, over the ages, those with power have looked over the masses and concluded that we are patsies, perhaps too lazy and too petty and too divided, to use the words of another writer, "to talk loud, talk back, and take a stand."

    I wonder if today the elite look at you and me and think, "They have 'mark' written all over them."

yes it does feel like a sweat shop sometimes...and just today i had this PA say "ya you nurses work hard but you make a lot of money"

ya if i work 80 hrs a week!