The country’s most important health care workers, the entry-level workers who provide care and preventive services, are often paid poverty-level wages and provided inadequate benefits and support, he said. said panelists at the statewide Zocalo Public Plaza series of Fresno events. “What is a good job now?”
As a result, there are not enough such workers, panelists said. Improving health care will therefore lead to higher wages, better benefits such as paid leave and health insurance, and career paths that allow nursing assistants to become registered nurses, such as nursing and other entry-level medical jobs. should start by improving the
“Many jobs are so important yet invisible in the health system,” said Janet Dill, a health policy and management scholar at the University of Minnesota who studies the public health workforce. . A common denominator in underrepresented jobs such as home care assistants and nursing assistants is that most of the workers are women of color or immigrant women, she added.
“This speaks volumes to the fact that women’s work is undervalued in our society,” Dill said.
The event, held in partnership with the James Irvine Foundation, focused on healthcare and was moderated by KVPR (Valley Public Radio) News Director Crescencio Rodriguez Delgado. The event was held at the Fresno Center, a multifaceted community service space on Fresno’s south side.
He began by asking panelist Professor Helda Pinson-Perez, a Fresno State Public Health professor with expertise in health issues in rural areas and vulnerable populations, to define the problem of health-related jobs.
Pinson-Perez responded that California and the country desperately need more healthcare workers for three reasons. An aging population needs more care. Health care providers are in short supply in rural and underserved areas. And we all need more preventative care, nursing care and health education.
But we can’t have more health workers without a willingness to make their jobs more attractive to workers.
Asked by Rodriguez Delgado what health-minded Fresno State students are looking for in a job, Pinson Perez emphasized that they have many aspirations and expectations. These include competitive salaries, career advancement opportunities, and plenty of free time to take care of your family and your health.
And most of all, “they also want opportunities to apply what they learn to serve their communities,” she added.
Martha Validares, the commission’s frontline caregiver, said she was not in the job. Instead, she worked for years as one of Fresno’s first female mail carriers before becoming a home support provider caring for her youngest daughter, who has Down syndrome.
She said she had no training in caregiving when she took the job. And she expressed her dissatisfaction with her salary – it took nine years of lobbying in Fresno County to get her raise. And securing essential benefits around vacation and retirement is extremely difficult. To defend herself and her other caregivers, Validares joined SEIU, a trade union representing home support workers.
“We deserve more and we will fight,” she said.
Without a willingness to make health worker jobs more attractive to workers, we will not be able to add more health workers.
She strongly supported a state law raising the minimum wage for health care workers to $25 an hour. But she also said the big problem was that caregivers weren’t paid for all the hours they worked. This is because it is difficult to say no to caregivers. “This is a job that everyone knows you’re not going to quit,” she said.
Dill, a health policy and workforce scholar at the University of Minnesota, emphasized that improving employment for health workers is at great risk. The health sector is now the largest employer in the country. Healthcare has transformed the beleaguered manufacturing economies of the Rust Belt and other parts of America.
However, these workers often have to work multiple jobs because they do not have full-time working hours or their own health insurance. They don’t have schedules that allow for rest and breaks, which are essential for mental health, she said. And medical jobs are physically demanding, which can be very dangerous. Nursing assistants have a relatively high incidence of occupational injuries and infections, she said.
Near the end of the conversation, panelists answered questions from the audience in person at the Fresno Center.
Host Rodriguez Delgado spoke about the closure of the Madera Regional Hospital in the region north of Fresno late last year. “This probably sent a signal to aspiring medical professionals that health care is precarious,” he says.
In response, Dill argued that hospital closures and failure to invest in health care workers are often the result of “payouts” for “insurers” who tend to prioritize luxury care over daily hands-on care. It was pointed out that it was due to the choice of “person”.
Pinson-Perez said mental health care for everyone, including frontline healthcare workers, is important, and telemedicine advances could do even more. Healthcare workers also need to do more work and work that they find challenging and meaningful, she said.
Both Pinson-Perez and Dill said there has been an outflow of entry-level health workers since the pandemic, with higher salaries offered in other sectors. Dill said these retirements have further intensified the workload in the healthcare sector.
Colombian immigrant Pinzon Perez said one way to create more health workers is to make better use of migrants who arrive in the United States with medical training.
Dill said extensive data research shows union membership also leads to better salaries for health workers. He added that public policies such as minimum wages, paid holidays and health insurance “can create better jobs in the lowest-tier healthcare sector.”
He said there needs to be a way to increase worker mobility so that workers can access higher-paying jobs.
“Nursing assistants are poor wages in the US and RNs are middle class,” she says. “Helping people transition through the health sector is one of the powerful ways we can promote social justice.”
