A plea for help to make nursing sustainable A plea for help to make nursing sustainable AJN Blog off the charts

by Casey Horner/via Unsplash

My hairdresser made a comment that I hear from many individuals who should not in healthcare.

“I do not understand how you possibly can work a full 12-hour shift when it is a life-or-death job. I mean, I actually have long days at work too, but cutting and styling hair is not life or death. I just don’t understand the way you do it.

I smiled and shrugged, as I often do.

“Thank you for noticing that. I don’t know. We’ve gotten used to it and have a certain flow at work, even when things get crazy. Plus, it reduces the number of days I have to commute because I put in so many hours in one day.”

I had lots more to say, but this wasn’t the place for it. This is.

The truth is that we nurses are simply programmed to do the sort of work and might do it outside of the usual eight-hour work day. Also working well for consistency of patient care within the ICU is the policy of just one patient nurse shift from the 12-hour day shift to the upcoming 12-hour night shift. Generally, we now have found ways to take care of waves of particularly high census where there are particularly sick patients, often followed by at the least a brief rest before the following wave.

Having said all this, within the pre-pandemic period I wrote lots about how hard the job was, and now I look back with curiosity and sobering and feel that just two or three years ago, nursing was a lot easier.

Nursing at a tipping point.

But at this cut-off date, it looks like nursing and its role in our wild, pandemic-stricken world are reaching a tipping point we have never been at before. A occupation that was already battling shortages is experiencing a brand new attrition that appears to be just starting as pandemic-burned nurses leave their bedsides across the country.

Those of us who remain on the bedside are physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. We are deeply concerned concerning the compromise in the standard of care we will provide as we, as a occupation, grapple with staffing and fume shortages (and increasingly shortages). We are deeply concerned about our own well-being and longevity. We are grappling with a brand new type of moral anxiety due to the barriers and politicization that impede progress in recovering from the Covid pandemic.

The immediate, obvious solution can be to rent more nurses to fill the gap, but health care organizations and nursing schools have long known that this is way easier said than done. Now, because the job has turn out to be far more difficult, with ever more recent waves of Covid-19 patients, cracks within the system leading to larger cracks, and PTSD resulting from the collective experience of all of it, we teeter precariously at this tipping point and watch with some trepidation on a cliff we hope to avoid.

What nurses need now.

I might enterprise to say that nurses need at the least:

• Specific appreciation for our work, beyond words of empathy and appreciation, and beyond token gifts like pins and bags that do not actually make our jobs or lives easier (hello, extraordinary costs of living in Los Angeles). Simply put, we would like higher pay that reflects and reflects the highly specialized, extremely stressful and irreplaceable work we do on the bedside.
• Leadership and administration in any respect levels have once more shown us, not only in words but in actions and policies, that they really respect our voices as we express what we want to do our jobs safely and sensibly.
• Respect from most people as we express our knowledge (and our despair) about preventable health and disease – especially regarding the chance of exposure to Covid-19 and the protection and effectiveness of vaccines.
• Ultimately, the health care system will likely be modernized through proactive actions by government authorities to deal with the gaps within the system highlighted by the pandemic.

What worries me and my colleagues across the country most is that our hope for the above seems shaky at best, but the necessity for it has never been more urgent.

What nurses all over the world say and feel.

This will not be meant to be a criticism of my personal workplace, but somewhat a lamentation of what I see and listen to from nurses all over the world. Additionally, this will not be intended to be a doomsday post, but somewhat a plea and call to motion from those with the ability to alter the above:

Administrators, policy makers and also you, most people.

Please. We are very drained, but we would like to maintain our hearts for this occupation. We wish to keep our hearts for you and your family members if you find yourself in our hospitals. However, we feel hurt and can’t proceed this fashion. This is solely not sustainable, and the the reason why it seems unsustainable go far beyond the proven fact that we’re doing life-or-death work for 12 hours at a time.

Please. Listen to us. Do your part.

(An earlier version of this post originally appeared on the creator’s blog, The heart of nursing.)