STOP the Cap on Travel Nurse Wages and Ask for Safe Staffing and Fair Wages
It has been brought to my attention by a post from @newthingnurse that some Members of Congress and hospital administrators are trying to cap the wages of travel nurses due to the burden of the pandemic. If nurses were valued historically as a profession, we would not be in this predicament. We would not feel the urge to leave and earn money traveling to pay off loans and support our families and it is likely that hospitals would have been staffed appropriately prior to the pandemic, thus decreasing the pressure on hospitals.
This is all proof, more than ever, that nursing is invaluable. No other professions in healthcare operate under such regulations and restrictions because we are NEEDED and we are too tired to fight. I beg you to please step up and fight this one. We deserve the basics in nursing - fair wages, safe staffing, maternity leave, and lunch breaks. The oppression, gaslighting, and reliance on us without the return has gone on long enough.
The following is a letter you can alter to send to your individual Member of Congress. The address listed below is that of the COVID-19 Response team coordinator. Please send this letter or your own letter to this man and your Member of Congress (https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member ). I have highlighted the areas you need to change to fit your background.
Mr. Jeffrey Zients
COVID-19 Response Team Coordinator
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. Zients,
My name is (Your name) and I have been a nurse and nurse practitioner for almost twelve years in the intensive care unit. It has been brought to my attention that Members of Congress are proposing a cap on wages for travel nurses due to the impact of the Omicron variant on the healthcare system. I plead for you to consider my points in the following letter.
Travel nursing is the downstream effect of a much more significant issue. The profession of nursing has operated under poor working conditions for decades. Countless research studies have indicated decreased patient safety with our current staffing regimen and yet hospital administrations have not changed our staffing model in half a century. With the evolution of medical technology and science, patient acuity has increased significantly, but staffing has not. We are beyond exhausted operating under the previous working conditions which have now been compounded by the pandemic.
More nurses have left the profession over the last two years than any other time in my career because our working conditions have been and continue to be intolerable. Nursing as a profession is begging for safe staffing, fair wages, education, and simply to be heard. Nursing wants the basics from employers so we can sustain ourselves while caring for our patients.
Travel nursing is not the problem and often, travel nurses work under worse conditions than the already tenuous conditions in their current hospitals. Travel nursing has given nurses an opportunity to pay off their student loans and care for themselves after the unimaginable trauma they have endured through the pandemic. We have lost patients, we have lost colleagues, we have lost faith, and we are fighting to not lose ourselves.
We are a profession that has only been recognized in our absence and now, in our recognition, administrators and Congress people are trying to take legal action to stop us from working for fair wages. There are no other specialties in healthcare with such regulations, which indicates our importance, yet oppression.
We as a profession, are begging, for regulation of nurse to patient ratios, fair wages, and benefits for ourselves so we can adequately and safely care for our patients. Please stop the regulation of our right to earn our worth and consider the regulation and investment in the above and upstream issues.
Sincerely,
(Your Name Here)
(Your contact here)