Do you need a Covid-19 nurse?That’s $ 8,000 a week | Health

“I wasn’t sleeping and I was the most anxious in my life,” Tripenny said. “I can assure you that your skills are going where you need them and that you have the protection you need.”

In April, she packed a two-month contract bag in Covid’s hotspot at the time, New Jersey, as part of what’s called a “mass spill” of nurses leaving a hospital outside Denver to become travel nurses. It was. Her new salary? For about $ 5,200 a week, there are contracts that require proper protective equipment.

After a few months, the offerings and stakes will be even higher for nurses wishing to move. In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, nurses can earn over $ 6,200 a week. A recent post about work in Fargo, North Dakota provided over $ 8,000 a week. Some people cost as much as $ 10,000.

In the early days of the pandemic, hospitals were competing for ventilators, Covid tests, and personal protective equipment. Currently, sites across the country are competing for nurses.The fall surge in the case of Covid has changed Hospital staffing Involved in some sort of national bidding war, hospitals are willing to pay exorbitant wages to secure the necessary nurses. This could shift the supply of nurses to wealthier areas, and as the pandemic worsens, there will be a shortage of public hospitals in rural and urban areas, and some hospitals will not be able to care for critically ill patients.

“It’s a big threat,” said CEO Angelina Salazar. Western Healthcare AllianceA consortium of 29 small hospitals in rural Colorado and Utah. “There is no way a local hospital can afford to pay that kind of salary.”

Hospitals have long relied on travel nurses to bridge staffing gaps without promising long-term employment. In the early days of the pandemic, doctors and nurses moved from unaffected areas to hotspots such as California, Washington, and New York to help the area grow. But now there is a surge in almost every part of the country, in the process infecting healthcare professionals. The competition for a limited number of available nurses is intensifying.

“I thought I would use the same resources when it was Colorado’s turn, and they would call the surrounding states and they would help,” said Julie Lomborg, a spokesman for the Colorado Hospital Association. .. “Now it’s a national pandemic. It’s not just one or two places like spring. It’s very important nationally and means everyone is looking for those resources.”

Jordan Sorenson, project manager for the Utah Hospital Association, has seen nurses take on the role of traveling nurses in all four major healthcare systems in Utah.

“Nurses quit, joined a traveling nursing company, worked in another hospital on the street, and doubled to tripled,” he said. “So it’s really a kind of robbery-Peter to Pay-Paul staffing situation.”

According to Sorenson, hospitals not only pay the high salaries offered to travel nurses, but also commission travel nurse agencies. Utah hospitals are trying to avoid hiring nurses from other hospitals in the state. However, hiring from a neighboring state like Colorado could mean that Colorado hospitals are poaching from Utah.

“It’s a conservative term to call the labor market for registered nurses a’cut throat’because of the current surge in hospitalizations due to COVID,” he said. Adam Seth Ritwin, Associate Professor of Labor Relations at Cornell University. “Even if the healthcare department somehow finds more beds, it can’t just go out and buy more front-line caregivers.”

Ritwin said he was happy to see the labor market rewarding essential workers: women and people with disproportionately high wages. Under normal circumstances, the market allows people to decide where they work and what wages are ideal.

“On the other hand, we are not operating under normal circumstances,” he said. “I am worried that in the midst of a serious public health crisis, the individual incentives faced by one hospital and the individual RNs of the other may be in fierce conflict with the needs of society as a whole.”

Some hospitals are looking for ways to overcome staffing challenges without wasting budget. This can include changing the ratio of nurses to patients, which can affect patient care. In Utah, the Hospital Association is discussing with the State Nursing Commission to allow nursing students in the final year of training to be certified early.

Meanwhile, the businesses of companies such as Wanderly and Krucial Staffing, centered on healthcare staff, are booming.

“When COVID first started and New York was the epicenter, we Wander David Deane, Senior Vice President of Wanderly, a website where healthcare professionals can compare offers from different institutions, said: “This is our time. To help nurses arrive at these destinations as soon as possible. And help recruiters get those nurses.”

According to Dean, the company has doubled its staff since the pandemic began. Demand is skyrocketing. Rocky Mountain states appear on the site up to 20 times more job listings than in January. And more and more people are meeting that demand.

According to data from 2018 National survey, About 31,000 travel nurses were working nationwide. Currently, Dean estimates that there are at least 50,000 travel nurses. Dean, who calls travel nurses “superheroes,” suspect that many of them are post-operative nurses who were dismissed when the hospital stopped selective surgery during the initial blockade.

The competition for nurses, especially those with ICU experience, is fierce. After all, South Dakota hospitals aren’t just competing with facilities in other states.

“We needed the help of COVID, so we sent nurses to Aruba, the Bahamas, and Curacao,” Dean said. “You go there, earn $ 5,000 a week and pay all the money, right? Who’s going to say that?”

Important staffing We specialize in sending healthcare professionals to disaster sites using military-style logistics. It filled the hotel and rented dozens of buses to take nurses to hotspots in New York and Texas. CEO Brian Cleary says the company’s administrative staff has grown from 12 to over 200 since the pandemic began.

“Now we have the highest amount we’ve ever had,” said Cleary, who added about 1,000 nurses to the “reserve” roster on Halloween weekend alone.

According to him, the base fee is $ 95 per hour, and some overtime nurses leave for $ 10,000 a week. There are drawbacksLike the fact that gigs don’t have health insurance and are an unstable and booming market.

Amber Hazard, who lives in Texas, started as an ICU nurse on a trip before the pandemic and said that such eye-catching amounts come with hidden fees and are paid sanely.

“How this affects your soul is not something you can pay for,” she said.

On a high-paying job caring for a COVID patient during the first wave of New York, she entered the Bronx hospital break room and saw a sign about how a regular staff nurse was on strike. I remember it.

“It’s what you know,’We’re not doing this. It’s not safe,'” Hazard said. “And it wasn’t safe, but someone had to do it.”

The highlight of her stint was to put the wedding ring back on the finger of the recovered patient. However, Hazard said he had secured far more body bags than the patient’s ring.

Tripenny, a travel nurse who left Colorado, is currently working with a cardiac surgery patient in Kentucky. She said she might return to COVID care when the contract expires.

Previously, in New Jersey, when a deceased patient was removed from the ventilator and stared at the damage that the virus could cause when the tube was removed, not to mention the failure to provide people with the care they needed. , She was hurt. It is filled with darkened blood from the lungs.

She now has to pay for her mental health care, unlike when she was on the hospital staff. But as a so-called traveler, she knows that each gig will end in a few weeks.

At the end of each week in New Jersey, she said, “Just look at your salary and you’ll be like,’OK. This is OK. You can do this.'”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a non-profit news service dealing with health issues. This is an editorial independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.