App hires nurse — patient at risk? - video Dailymotion

DW (English)

In the US, care workers can be booked for single shifts using apps. Platforms unite care workers with hospitals, much like dating apps. But experts say this trend is dangerous.

Transcript

00:00The heart of these gig nursing platforms are AI scheduling tools that basically create a match.

00:08You can think of a dating app like Tinder or Grindr.

00:11And this is what it basically is for understaffed medical facilities

00:15and available and trained nurses or health care workers.

00:20Getting booked for a shift is easy.

00:23It gets complicated when the work starts.

00:26Workers are able to pull out their phone,

00:28indicate their interest in a shift and get assigned to a facility to which they've never been.

00:34So it creates tremendous risk for patient safety because as workers tell us,

00:38they don't often even have the basic information about how to log into a portal on a machine

00:43to indicate what a patient's medications are.

00:47For a study, researcher Katie Wells interviewed nurses.

00:51They told her how isolated they feel at work.

00:54There's often no one to talk to when problems arise.

01:00What's more, those booked through a platform have fewer rights than nurses who are employed in one place.

01:05They're not recognized as workers. They are not given any right to protection from discrimination.

01:12They're not given a right to minimum wage.

01:15They're not given a right to workers' compensation if they're injured on the job.

01:19Nurses exchange experiences in Facebook groups.

01:23However, no one wanted to speak about it on camera, partly out of fear of being deported from the U.S.

01:29To get a shift, some platforms require workers to underbid competitors.

01:34Workers in the gig economy are often poised against each other.

01:38Something that's very, very new that we're seeing that I dearly hope will not be deployed to other industries

01:43is the idea that nurses can indicate on their phone the lowest amount they're willing to work per hour.

01:50And so then if I am a healthcare administrator, I can set my parameters so that the app will automatically,

02:00the platform company will select the worker who goes lowest.

02:03Now, let's take a look at all the different kinds of requirements.

02:18Now, let's take a look at what the app does.

02:21Now, let's take a look at what it looks like.

App hires nurse — patient at risk?

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