Reclaiming Nurses Week Part 2: The Cause

In Part 2 of this video series, Reclaiming Nurses Week, we hear about The Cause. Nurses share the reasons behind their mental health struggles and how the pandemic heightened these issues, but the cause is rooted deeper than just the previous 2 years. Listen as our nurses shed light on what causes their struggle and the support they truly need moving forward. Nursing is the most trusted profession in the US for over 20 years, and now our nurses need to trust we are supporting them and that we hear them.

In the previous Part 1, we examined The Problem, and heard stories of the impact burnout has on the mental health of our nurses.

Read the transcript:

Lori: With the pandemic we just saw people placed in an extraordinary situations.

Sarah: That's driving through empty streets to get to work, being told you better have your ID on you in case you get stopped by the National Guard or something. Terrifying to hear that.

Tamar: We went into what now feels like 2+ years of not knowing how long, how much is expected of us.

Sarah: I was on a unit that was incredibly short staffed, was a revolving door.

Tamar: For many nurses this meant a change in their role very quickly and by that I mean working in more specialized areas that they were not necessarily trained in.

Sarah: Previously, you would have a mentor or a preceptor for maybe six months before really fully going into your role. Now you get 3 weeks.

Lori: It was very stressful and continues to be.

Sarah: How can health care workers be expected to be okay if we can't even seek help without fear of stigma, without fear of losing our jobs?

Sharon: As we have in nursing for decades, we have had this growing concern of a nursing shortage. Certainly, we have seen that happen over the COVID period as well with nurses fleeing from the workforce with nurses experiencing tremendous stress and mental health angst. They're short staffed, their assignments are more patients than they really are prepared to care for, or have the bandwidth to care for and that includes in intensive care units.

Joshua: It's the little things. Little tiny tech things, I think that kind of start mounting. If you spend 3 hours searching for a cable, those things I think add up and that's what makes you feel like you're a piece of crap because you didn't provide great care whenever you know you have the capability to do so. It's just, you don't have the resources. You don't have the staff to do it.

Rose: You're the hero. The nurses are the hero and we give the care to the ill, but we are not the ill.

Cheryl: We really don't promote taking care of the nurses before they get sick.

Rose: Within the guidelines that are placed for a nurse to maintain their licensure and be a nurse, they cannot be also the patient or the ill person.

Joshua: I definitely work with heroes every single day, but I do believe that if we were truly heroes, then we would be supported by our employers.

Sharon: We have, in nursing, been relatively reactive instead of proactive to creating a workforce that is sustainably strong.

Lori: I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't really feel like a hero. I mean, I think most of us feel that this is a calling.

Sarah: I think humanizing nursing instead of putting us into this weird hero narrative is so important and using that narrative does not help us and it kind of helps excuse what we've gone through.

Joshua: We don't need a hospital system to wish us a happy Nurses Week and provide a pizza party. We need real-life actionable changes that are going to be happening soon.

Julie: Nursing is a profession about giving oneself to service, but you can lose oneself in service. Nurses have to remind themselves that to be the best nurse, you have to take care of oneself.