I just read an email from my nurses e news and I am not sure how I feel. It seems the US government has a proposed bill..HR 5924 to get rid of the cap of 20,000 work visas per fiscal year for nurses and physical therapists from other countries to come here and work. It is proposed as the Emergency Nursing Supply Relief Act. It also allows for more grant money for nursing schools which I wholly agree with. I am just on the fence with the influx of foreign trained nurses.
The floor I work on now is very culturally diverse. The problem I have is not with the nurses themselves it's with the communication barrier. We do walking rounds at our facility when we change shift. I introduce the next nurse and sometimes the patient will make a comment or try to make a joke and the nurse doesn't get it, the patient looks at me with a nervous look like "she can't understand me" I have to say it's gonna be a good night and leave. I feel awful for the poor person in the bed. They have to be thinking, what the heck am I gonna do, I can't understand her and she can't understand me, what country is this? That's what I would think. Most people don't have to deal with the diverse dialects and accents that we do on a daily basis, it's just not as easy for them to understand the accents. It's got to be scary for them.
I also had a patient who complained of a little chest pressure but denied pain so the nurse did nothing about it. When she told me in report that he complained of a little chest pressure since 6 am and it's now 7am. I got right up, didn't let her finish her sentence, and went to check the patient. I think it was a combination of a lack of experience and a weak grasp on the language that caused her not to act. He was complaining of chest pressure, but had not gotten any nitro and didn't even have any oxygen on, very basic stuff. The patient ended up in the cath lab by 8:15 and had 2 stents to his RCA. For the non-cardiac nurses out there...that's a BIG DEAL. It's scary to think what could have happened if the nurse following her also had a weak grasp on the language or was as inexperienced.
I am not sure that allowing more foreign trained nurse to come and work here is the answer to our shortage. How about making it so nurses want to stay in nursing? How about cutting out some of the paperwork stuff so we can spend more time with our patients and give them the care they need? A lot has to do with work ethic as well, which is lacking in the USA in general. Nursing is a career not just a job. It's bettering people's lives, or trying to at least positively impact them, not spending half the day on the Internet and the other half on your cell phone.
There are lots of great people out there who would love to be nurses and they are getting put on a waiting list for nursing school...then they find something else to do because it just takes too long to get in. There has been a nursing shortage since I started back in 1991...I wish I knew the answers...any ideas?
Non noc nocere.
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I feel your pain. Just the other night, I tried to call report to the floor on one of my truama pts and got a Philipino nurse. I had to just about spell everything to her from the name on down. In the middle of this had a GSW to the head come in, unannounced, bleeding, and leaking brains onto my nice clean floor. I just hung up and later faxed a written report to the floor after having a long talk with her charge nurse. BTW someone got a great heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys from the target of todays wonderful society.
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