nursing layoffs

It’s hard to believe that in my lifetime I’d ever see layoffs in the nursing field. Like many of you, I remember the good times when there were billboards around my city advertising signing bonuses for nurses at local hospitals. That’s all changing. Two recent articles in the Wall Street Journal (1) (2) and one in the Washington Post are focusing on the fact that, while there is still a nursing shortage, there is now a shortage of nursing jobs. That sounds like a contradiction in terms but it’s not.

In a March 2009 report, the AHA revealed that 53% of the hospitals surveyed were operating at a negative margin or in plain English, they’re losing money. Hospitals in some areas of the country are reducing hospital staff. Just a year ago hospitals that were taking just about any skilled nurse who walked through the door are now finding it easier to be selective in their hiring. In short, this ain’t your mother’s nursing profession anymore.

If the news from nursing wasn’t already bad enough, there’s a news story about Dean Health System which announced its intention to “immediately” lay off 90 employees. This included a nurse who was assisting in a surgical procedure and was called out of surgery to be told she was laid off! Okay, I can understand cost cutting, but don’t you think it’s a little extreme to lay someone off in the middle of a procedure? Has the world just gone crazy? What if they’d laid off the anesthesiologist? Or the surgeon? I shudder to think of the consequences (Dr. Smith, please report to HR, stat!).

The good thing about legal nurse consulting is that medical malpractice and personal injury litigation is recession proof. Now that we’re seeing financial stress on hospitals and doctors, I believe we’re going to start seeing more and more medical and nursing malpractice as well as the delivery of substandard healthcare.

A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that a fifth of Medicare patients were rehospitalized within 30 days of their initial discharge! When the pressure is on to cut healthcare costs by reducing care, testing and length of stay; as nursing shifts come under more pressure with fewer nurses covering more patients; and as healthcare continues to devolve into what I call the “Dark Ages of Medicine;” you can be sure that Certified Legal Nurse Consultants will be on the front lines working with attorneys to redress the wrongs that are certain to happen.

One of the things I like best about being a self-employed entrepreneur is that the only person who can lay me off – is me (and that isn’t happening any time soon)!

Stay busy!

Success Is Inside!

You’ve heard the news: bailouts for this industry, bailouts for that industry, bailouts for everyone except for the honest business woman or man. It seems like you have to be a pretty big crook or a terrible money manager to get a bailout from the government.

This morning, over some healthy green tea, my staff and I discussed what a government bailout might look like for the average entrepreneur:

• A pair of rose-colored glasses to help you to see the financial news in a better light.
• A lottery ticket to give you something for your retirement fund that has better odds than the stock market.
• A used TSA quart-size baggie containing leftover government office supplies (that you and I paid for anyway) such as bent paperclips, broken black binder clamps, stump-ends of staples and an empty bottle of white glue to help keep your business together.
• A roll of duct tape in case the above fails (BTW – here in Texas my friends call it “hunnert-mile-an-hour tape” and you can too – when your business gets rolling again).
• An open, and partially consumed, bottle of Jack Daniels (probably from the Treasury Secretary’s liquor cabinet) to help take your mind off your financial problems.
• A bottle of extra-strength Tylenol^® to help cure the effects of your late-nite discourse with “Gentleman Jack.”
• A bag of generic coffee to give you something to wash down the Tylenol^® that morning and give you the energy to go to work and focus on your business (and not the economy).
• And finally, a Travel Doodle Pro to help you stay in communication with your office after your Blackberry^® account is cancelled.

All of this would arrive postage due, in a damaged box, courtesy of the folks who brought you the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the Big Three bailout.

I’m hoping that it doesn’t come to this, but in a world that’s seeing its first big nursing layoffs, I’m glad I work in what my friend, Dale Barnes, (Check back for an upcoming interview with Dale) calls a recession-proof profession, legal nurse consulting. One thing’s for sure – the stock market may run short of money, but America will never run short of attorneys!

If the government is going to let the auto industry suffer and die, it won’t help entrepreneurs either. Don’t wait for the government to bail you out. Only you can bail yourself out.

Success Is Inside!