Letters to the editor for Feb. 9
Washington has a nursing crisis
It’s clear we have a nursing crisis in Washington. The legislature is trying to help, but fixed staffing ratios for nurses are not the solution. They think the heart of the problem is working conditions, when the real issue is a shortage of nurses.
Hospitals are trying everything within their means to recruit and retain staff, from bonuses to incentives and much more. But it’s basic economics: When supply goes down, demand goes up. Whether large or small, hospitals across the state are competing for the same pool of resources, which leaves smaller hospitals with skeleton crews. As an assistant nursing manager at a rural hospital, I had to step away from my leadership duties to return to the floor and provide direct patient care. We have support from FEMA nurses, but the contract ends in March. Retired nurses are not coming back and new graduate nurses cannot work alone proficiently for at least a couple of years.
These staffing ratios will make nurses treat patients not as people but as numbers, forcing us to make heart-wrenching moral and ethical decisions about who receives care and who does not. Forcing nurses to make patient care decisions based on ratios would be disgraceful to our profession and harm on our communities.
Taking patient care out of the center of what we do and replacing with staffing ratios will cause more nurses to leave this crucial profession.
Lourdes Schoch, BSN, RN, Montesano
We need to address the mess
Why do we continuously uproot the homeless camps then spend thousands of dollars to clean up the area then allow campers to set up camps somewhere else and repeat? There’s a word for doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The cities and Thurston County need to establish designated areas for camping, then offer basic services, including sanitation and garbage disposal. Camping in all other areas would be illegal.
Our cities and county have a serious littering problem and we as citizens should be ashamed that it has gotten so out of control. Stop the repeat cycle and do something to give us all our civic pride.
Allen Hatten, Olympia
Ain’t nothing moving
“I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari . . . ,” the song goes.
Think about all the storms and fires and tornadoes that have blasted around our world and then add COVID. Then add the reluctance of young people to be drivers and haulers. Commerce is in trouble.
History tells us that those who travel and work will always be strangers in the lands to which they carry goods and services.
It’s a lonely job, carrying what humans want and need around the world: by ship and rail, across roads and highways.
Today the halting delivery of global supply chains requires consumers to understand that without immigrant and migrant labor, everything falls apart. Who will drive those lonely roads, who will pick our harvests, who will open a restaurant, who will pick, ship and crate?
Open borders have always supplied the labor we need.
Only fear of people moving around this earth prevents economic prosperity. People have been wandering this earth for millennia. Let’s all wander together.
We need human workers.
Lisa Rognas, Olympia