As a nurse, Barb Hostrup, 58, deals with everything from bedpans to bedsores.
She sticks patients with needles. She gives sponge baths. She changes not only bandages but sheets on beds.
“I have patients stare at me,” she says, “saying, ‘Why are you changing the beds?’ … Well, there’s no one else to do it.”
Sometimes, her shifts stretch to 12 or even 14 hours. Sometimes, she can’t take a break because there aren’t enough other nurses or assistants on her station.
Hostrup said she went into nursing more than 19 years ago because she wanted to be a caregiver. Now, she says she has become something else.
“I feel like I am an apology machine,” she said. “I am always apologizing for not being there quickly enough. … I have to be sorry to management, sorry to the patient and sorry to the family for what I can’t get done.”
Hostrup was one of 10 nurses dressed in scrubs to lobby this week for state legislation aimed at making hospitals more accountable. One proposal would require hospitals to report nurse-to-patient ratios so consumers could make an informed choice about where they go for care.
The nurses’ efforts were organized by the Service Employees International Union, which would like to unionize Colorado’s 51,000 registered nurses – and thousands of other health-care workers.
That’s an ambitious goal in a state that does not embrace unions. But Colorado’s health-care system – like the rest of the nation’s – is so screwed up that some of its workers are beginning to appreciate what a little organization can do.
“Before, when the unions tried to get in, I wouldn’t have anything to do with it,” said Glaphre Spencer, 64, who has been a nurse for 42 years. “But things have gotten to a point where we have to have a stronger voice.”
The nurses I spoke with at the Capitol view health care as a spiraling mess:
Skyrocketing health-insurance costs leave more people uninsured.
Hospitals can’t turn away the uninsured, so they shift the costs of the uninsured to the insured.
That makes health insurance even more expensive, perpetuating the cycle.
Profit-hungry corporations – instead of faith-based nonprofits – are increasingly running hospitals.
“The emphasis is more on the dollar than the patient,” Spencer said.
In this environment, many folks won’t turn to hospitals until they are severely ill, making nurses’ jobs even tougher.
“The patients are just getting sicker and sicker,” Hostrup said.
More than “100,000 Americans die each year from hospital-acquired infections,” according to an SEIU fact sheet in support of state legislation that would require hospitals to report infection rates.
Hospital administrators frequently lament a nationwide nursing shortage. But have they created this shortage by making nursing an unbearable profession?
“I quit bedside nursing because I did not feel that I could deliver quality and safe patient care,” said Jule Monnens, 50.
She took a pay cut to become a nursing teacher, hoping to influence a new generation of nurses with the hard facts.
“There is little respect for the knowledge that nurses have,” she said. “Nurses are not considered partners at the table.”
It’s a thankless job. But it pays relatively well, with a median hourly wage of $27.40 in Colorado, according to the Colorado Department of Labor.
The Nurse Alliance of Colorado, a group organized by the SEIU, argues that there is no shortage of nurses – just a shortage of nurses willing to work in hospitals. The group cites a 21 percent annual turnover rate for bedside nurses nationwide. These nurses get easier work in clinics, outpatient centers and doctors’ offices.
Hostrup – who has dedicated herself to caring for the truly ill – says she is not going to do that.
“I don’t want to be the doctor’s handmaiden doing simple things for relatively healthy people,” she said. She’s not bucking for an administrative post, either, having worked as an administrator in the past.
“I got to the point where I felt like a phony,” she said, “representing the people at the top who don’t know what the nurses in the trenches are up against.”
Al Lewis’ column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. Respond to Lewis at , 303-820-1967, or alewis@denverpost.com.
