The gig economy’s labor model and its algorithmic management technologies now have a foothold in one of the largest labor sectors in the country: health care. On-demand nursing companies such as CareRev, Clipboard Health, ShiftKey, and ShiftMed have promised hospitals more control and nurses more flexibility. Through original interviews with 29 “gig” nurses and nursing assistants, this brief finds that these apps encourage nurses to work for less pay, fail to provide certainty about scheduling and the amount or nature of work, take little to no accountability for worker safety, and can threaten patient well-being by placing nurses in unfamiliar clinical environments with no onboarding or facility training. On-demand nursing platforms are also using the Uber playbook to lobby state legislatures in an attempt to exempt themselves from existing labor regulations. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses have fled the profession as a result of poor working conditions, creating what some have incorrectly identified as a “nursing shortage.” As gig nursing platforms falsely promise to empower workers and meet their needs, it is up to legislators, policymakers, civic leaders, and community organizations to act to solve the real problems at the root of this crisis.
Send them over the pond. Here the freelance/travel nurses make 2-4x what the normal nurses do(and with no real economical risk as they still are employed at the agency). And often have far better working conditions.
What a bit of regulation can do,right?
Gig nursing is different from travel nursing.
Travel nurses are paid much more than staff nurses and often receive travel stipends and housing allowances.
It’s going to make even more nurses run away, when many places are lacking nurses.
