Nursing Fail

So we've not had the best luck with nursing since we moved in July, 2012.  We continue to struggle to find the right fit for Gracie, for school and for our family.  That's a whole lot of "fitting" to deal with.  And, given that agencies don't pay homecare nurses well to begin with, the search becomes that more difficult as the pool of dedicated, qualified individuals gets smaller and smaller.  Add in the fact that we live a little isolated compared to the rest of the East Bay Area and it just narrows our options further.

We are on the hunt... again.  We hired a new nurse out of the slim pickings sent our way.  She shadowed Gracie and her current nurse at school for a total of 14 hours last week, moved out of the immediate area over the weekend and, today, officially quit by not showing up for her final day of shadowing before starting full time on Monday.  This means that Gracie's last day of school for an undetermined amount of time is tomorrow.  I am SO angry and frustrated... and loathe that this issue is out of my control.  Other than having every agency in our area (that we can use) on the hunt for a nurse, I can't do much else to solve this problem.  My sweet girl loves school.  This STINKS.

Ultimately, what needs to happen is the County or District need to hire Gracie a nurse directly and cut out the middle man of the agency.  This would increase the quality of the applicant tremendously as well as give the school district or county (or both) some sort of control over the situation.  They've never hired a nurse directly for a student; they've only funded the nursing through the agency.  The problem with that is the agency receives a huge fee per hour for the nurse while at school with Gracie but they do not pass that (or even a generous portion) down to the nurse.  Instead, they use the extra dollars to offset what they are losing on their MediCal patients.  This system is so broken and backwards... and that, clearly, is another post (or series of posts).