One of my best friends is an ED nurse supervisor currently working on his DNP. His project attempts to decrease the amount of time it takes to move a patient from the ED to an open bed in the hospital. He is exploring why it can sometimes take up to 4 hours after a patient is discharged from the ED until they are placed in an empty room. He postulates that some nurses demonstrate a lack of caring for the needs of the waiting patient population. My friend points to the efficiency of the US airline industry to quickly deplane, clean, staff, refuel, and board new passengers and baggage in under an hour as a successful model.

I asked him if he thought that today's healthcare industry is hiring the wrong people for the job. Should nurses, and perhaps all hospital staff, be vetted for their sense of altruism and selflessness? In Principles of Biomedical Ethics, the authors note philosopher David Hume's observation that our sympathy for others is almost always fainter than our concern for ourselves, and that our sense of sympathy continues to weaken as we account for people further away from our social center.1

Consider that the first hospitals were staffed with nuns dedicated to serving strangers' needs ahead of their own. Could hiring personnel who demonstrate such selflessness enhance patient safety? Or, is better support for those presently working in the industry the answer?

-STEVEN LEE, MSN, RN, CEN

San Diego, Calif.

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