I can’t believe that I missed Delta. Tropical storm Delta, that is. I haven’t looked at the news or the hurricane forecast for a few days, and look at what happens. Yet one more tropical storm, and on Thanksgiving no less.

Sweet Delta, nice little storm that she is, is lurking out in the Atlantic and represents no threat to land. She is the 25th named storm, the all time record breaker. Do you think that we can still squeeze one more in before the Nov. 30 deadline rolls around?

But George Bush, the man who has remained safe from all hurricanes and natural disasters, doesn’t believe that global warming has anything to do with it. Never mind that the Atlantic is warmer, and when the ocean feels like a bathtub, hurricanes go wild. But Bush science says global warming is nonsense, because it might interfere with the money making ability of his cronies. Now if global warming was good for business, we’d hear ol’ Bushie singing a far different tune.

I have an uneasy feeling that this hurricane season is not an aberration, but merely a sign of things to come. I don’t know if our planet can tolerate three more years of Bush wisdom.

What would you do with half a million bucks? Lots of things, right? Well it appears that the eminent Robert Wood Johnson foundation can’t think of anything useful to do with its grant money.

Here’s another wonderful addition to the great nursing shortage, another indication of the monumental effort to solve it.

The Buffalo Business Journal has some earthshattering news to report.

The underlying reasons behind the nation’s nursing shortage will be the focus of a study undertaken in part by the University at Buffalo.

Carol Brewer, associate professor of nursing at UB, has received $440,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for the study.

Her award is part of a $1.9 million grant to the New York University College of Nursing.

The five-year national study will survey 5,000 recent graduates of registered nurse programs periodically over the first four years of their careers to track the reasons for their work decisions.

I suppose that any nurse reading this, who is ready to leave the profession–or at least hospital nursing–is probably wondering whether to laugh or cry. That nurse can get on the telephone to the dweebs who are about to indulge in this great earthshattering study, and tell them why nurses are leaving.

We know the reasons for the nursing shortage. Each and every nursing shortage for the past 30 years has been studied and dissected, and each and every time, the same answers pop up. Nurses have been surveyed, re-surveyed, oversurveyed, and nothing new is reported. I would say that the nursing shortage is about the most overstudied topic on earth. Well, maybe orgasm has it beat, but put it this way–the last thing we need is more money wasted on yet another repetitive study.

“This research will allow us to track changes over the first few years of a new RN’s career, during which many seem to leave hospitals,” said Brewer, a specialist in nursing labor issues. “It is important for us to know whether the new nurses are leaving particular settings, or leaving the profession altogether.”

That information is already available, in a study that was published three years ago. The information hasn’t changed, Carol. It hasn’t changed in 30 years.

Brewer said the answer will help academic institutions and health-care employers devise different solutions to the shortage.

Now this is the part that is so sickening. We know what solutions will work, but yet, academics and industry personnel prefer to keep studying and restudying the nursing shortage–until it just disappears. These people aren’t interested in finding solutions, because if they were, that’s what the grant would be used for. You know, like setting up training programs for administrators, and teach them that nurses aren’t mules or pack animals but professionals. That using a nurse to wipe vomit off the floor is a very poor use of a trained professional. That trying to force nurses to wear tracking devices or buttons that say “Ask Me if I Washed My Hands” does wonders to bring down morale and up the vacancy rate.

Surveys of nurses done 25 years ago are nearly identical to surveys that are a week old. We know all of this, it’s been done and done again. But as this morsel of idiocy shows that developing solutions and putting them into practice is not a priority. It’s not the goal. The goal is to just give out grants, moan and groan, talk about the need to “increase” the number of nursing graduates to “ease” the shortage, and leave it at that.

All I can say is shame on the Robert Wood Johnson foundation for wasting the money. And shame on the academics at UB for pretending that they have no idea what’s driving nurses out of the hospital and healthcare. Are they so out of touch with the reality of nursing, so encased in their ivory tower, that they are really this ignorant?