Nurses strike Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick at Rutgers University. All photos by Eileen Goldfinger. 8/29/23.
Nurses union fails to win a solution.
Nurses blow horns, shout, dance, march, chant, and stay in motion on the picket lines. 10/29/23. Blogfinger.net
By Eileen Goldfinger and Paul Goldfinger, MD, FACC, Blogfinger.net. Ocean Grove NJ 8/29/23.
Somehow the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick has managed to keep functioning despite 1,700 nurses on strike. Those nurses have been replaced by rent-a-nurse legions who, according to one staff doctor there, evidently do good work.
These strike-buster nurses get paid high fees per day, and the out-of- work nurses are threatened now with loss of health insurance as of September 1 which they will have to buy out of pocket. No talks are currently happening.
Why should this worry us? Well the strike has put extra pressure on local hospitals such as Jersey Shore. We interviewed a med-surg nurse from there who told us that the pressure is rising on nurses whose work loads keep going up, threatening quality care.
We were in the Jersey Shore ER about two weeks ago where we found a 3rd world madhouse. It was so crowded and understaffed, that patients were in stretchers lining the walls.
The staff was running around like chickens without heads. They didn’t have uniform assignments, moving from one body to the next, putting fingers in the medical dykes. It was hard to know the title and level of expertise of anyone interacting with patients. If you approached by a worker they may promise to return but may not do so.
Patients were being neglected, and some of those needing procedures discovered that no procedure rooms were available and some tasks had to be done off to a side in an alcove.
IV’s were running dry, and there were few doctors–we only identified one who spared a minimal amount of time with us. Everyone was in uniform, but it was impossible to know who was whom.
In my day we were always running to the ER to offer expert help to the ER docs and for the benefit of our own patients.. Now it looks like the attending docs and specialists are staying home allowing corporate efficiency experts to tell them how to be physicians.
I have never seen a madhouse like the Jersey Shore ER that early morning this month, evidently due to the strike.
And now that many docs are employees, when will they strike? It used to be unethical along with doctor unions so—-it’s coming.
Is it crazy like that now in the Neptune ER ? Don’t know, but despite the strike in New Brunswick, a doctor there told me that things were running smoothly inside the building at RWJ.
If you get admitted to Jersey Shore from the ER, a doctor’s name may be on your chart as “attending” but that doctor may never show up, leaving you in the hands of G-d knows whom.
If you try to find out who is in charge of your case, you will probably not succeed. It would be a “team,” but don’t you want to choose your “team? ” At Jersey Shore your doctor may barely speak understandable English, and people wander into your room and insist on examining you. Who are they and will they be writing your orders? Is this one of the “best” hospitals in New Jersey?
But this strike can’t go on, and the consequences remain to be seen.
This is another worrisome situation in a newly designed healthcare system that strives to place the bottom line first, and that is not how it is supposed to be.
Amazingly, these corporate changes are evolving so fast that infrastructure is starting to collapse from shock and awe, and that threatens our previously world-best system.
Meanwhile the patients are unsure how the system is supposed to work and why their doctors won’t call them back.
Where is Hippocrates when we need him? Who is placing the patients first?
And let us know what you think, but please spare us detailed case reports.
JOHN WILLIAMS. “Munich 1972.”