School districts, hospitals cut nurses

Nurses, long a presence in many schools and the backbone of hospital care, are being cut back or stretched thin, according to several news organizations; Meanwhile, NPR reports on a poll that found three out of five patients feel their doctors rush through exams.

The Wall Street Journal: School Districts Cut More Nurses
School nurses, a fixture in many American schools for more than a century, are being cut from Philadelphia to San Diego, as public schools struggle to provide basic services while continuing to slash budgets. ... The cutbacks come as nurses are increasingly being pressed to serve a student body with a growing number of complex, chronic health problems -- from diabetes and life-threatening allergies to asthma and obesity, according to school officials, parents and nurses (Audi, 5/24).

WAMU: Need A Nurse? You May Have To Wait
Nurses are the backbone of the hospital -- just ask pretty much any doctor or patient. But a new poll conducted NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health finds 34 percent of patients hospitalized for at least one night in the past year said "nurses weren't available when needed or didn't respond quickly to requests for help" (Neighmond, 5/25).

NPR: What's Up, Doc? When Your Doctor Rushes Like The Road Runner
To physician Larry Shore of My Health Medical Group in San Francisco, it's no surprise that patients give doctors low marks for time and attention. "There's some data to suggest that the average patient gets to speak for between 12 and 15 seconds before the physician interrupts them," Shore says. "And that makes you feel like the person is not listening." A doctor's impatience, though, is often driven more by economics than ego. Reimbursement rates for a primary care visit are notoriously low, and Shore laments the need to hustle patients in and out (Varney, 5/24).