I used to love being a nurse...

...But now,the love affair is over.

Until about 8 months ago, I worked in a cardio/pulmonary ICU. With the COVID 19 surges, dangerously short staffing, and the physical and emotional pain that followed me home after a 12 hour shift I was done. I had to get out. Travel nursing was just not an option, as both travel and ICU nursing are a young person's gig. Can't afford to retire, and simply quitting wasn't an option.So, I took a job AWAY from the ICU and the bedside. I went to work in our radiology nusing unit.

This was, at first, a welcome respite from the insanity of the ICU. I don't gocome home in pain anymore. My wife says I'm not a big ball of stress when I come home from work and,for the most part, I sleep better at night. Win...Win...Win...right? No.

I am am masters degree nurse, don't ask why I'm not working as an NP...another story entirely. All of my training and education has been directd at providing care to the critically ill...their families ans loved ones. Working as part of an interdisciplinary team to meet the care needs of patients, be it a tylenol or rapid sequence intubation, central line placement, hanging sedation and multiple vasopressors, continuous hemodialysis and pronation. That was my life, and I was good at it. But now, I'll never go back to it again...unless there are MAJOR changes in how the healthcare system I work for treats its nurses.

Most lay people are, blissfully, unaware of the staffing issues our hospital system, and healthcare in general, especially in the acute care setting. If they were, they would stay away from hospitals. In the ICU I used to work on, a nurse had to, at one time, have been working on the unit for at least two years to even be CONSIDERED eleigible to precept new nurses. Now, there are new hires beening precepted by nurses who have only been on the unit for 3 months. This has come about for multiple reasons, many of them long standing. These issue were thrown into sharp focus as the COVID 19 Pandemic deepened, leading more and more nurses to flee their staff nurse positions for agency nursing positions. positions where they could make more in three months than they could in a year as a staff nurse. Others, like myself, fled bedside nursing. Then there were many other tenured nurses who fled the profession entirely.

COVID 19 highlighted and exacerbated long standing issues that hospital and healthcare system exeutives preferred to ignore or sweep under the rug. Hospitals have, for some time, now engaged in the practice of short-staffing nursing units to maximize profits...even for an ostensibly non-profit hospital.There is the undervaluing of the services nurses provide in the actue care and ICU care settings as reflected in pay which is simply not commensurate with the education and responsibility demanded on nurses today. Health insurance and other benefits provided to nurses are cut as healthcare systems reap record profits in FY '21. There is little, if any effort to incentivize tenured, experienced nurses to remain at the bedside as it is seen as less expensinve to hire in new grad nurses when nurses, like me, leave the bedside. We ahve the spectacle of healthcare system and hospital administrators begging Congress to do something to reign in the "price gouging" by staffing agencies for the nurses they provide to the acute and critical care settings, But these administrators have no one but themselves to blame as they wring their hands over the current nursing shortage. A shortage they have caused.

The fact of the matter is there are more than enough nurses. They just don't want to work in hospitals. According to a 2017 report, issued by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, there are enough nurses to meet the needs of all but a few states. Another 2017 report, issued by the U.S. Deartment of Health and Human Services, projected a "surplus" of nurses at least as far out as 2030. But make no mistake, there IS a shortage. It's just not the one hospital and healthcare system executives are wringing their ahnds and clutching their pearls over. The eral shortage is a shortage of jobs where nurses are valued for their contributions and work to the fullest extent of their education and training. Jobs where patient needs...as determinied by nursing staff...take precedence over profits and exectutive bonuses.

The needed changes are not going to come from the hospitla/healthcare system level, nor from the stte or local levels. It must come from the Federal level. Safe staffing levels must be mandated for all levels of care, from the general medicla unit to the ICU. occupation health and safety standards to protect the wellbeing and safety of nurses, other healthcare staff and, most importantly, patients. It's time for nurses to stand up and demand the respect that we, as a profession, deserve. Respect equal tho that accorded physicians working for a hospital or healthcare system. It's time for nurses to unite.

REFERENCES:

https://www.liberationnews.org/hospital-greed-caused-nurse-shortage-not-covid-19/