How Covid is Causing the 2021 Nurse’s Exodus

There have always been rumors about a shortage of nurses even before I decided to become one years ago. I stumbled across this article that stated that there was no shortage at all, but a refusal to perform under the hospital work conditions. Meaning, there were plenty of nurses, but none that wanted to work in the hospital. The article I read quickly disappeared and replaced by questions and suspicion over the years. After I gained my education and experience, I’ve learned real hard lessons about the truth behind the “nursing shortage”. Today though, I’ve decided to write about what’s happening with Covid and nursing. Here’s the truth about how Covid became the last straw for many nurses.

Nursing deals with people, angry people.

As the nation became panicked by the uncertain state of this unknown disease, nurses got the brunt of the emotional toll from patients, families, and aliens(foreigners). Everyone seemed to use nurses as a crutch and punching bag. Now that things are kind of cooling down, people that have waited to come into the hospital are in a worse condition. The atmosphere is also more intense in every area of the hospital. People are a lot more impatient, meaner, more violent prone. It’s only a matter of time before people get bold enough to start shooting healthcare peeps…wait, I think we are already there.

Hospital staff also pushed responsibilities onto nurses.

It’s hard enough to keep up with my own routines, but during Covid…everyone used nurses to get their job done as well. Nurses across the country started to notice that their job roles started to stretch further as ancillary staff refused to do their part. For example, nurses had to handle trash in every unit when they once depended on housekeeping to manage it. Admins started sending nurses in and out of the same Covid positive rooms. This places nurses at higher risks for contracting Covid because of the longer exposure to Covid. Many nurses did end up catching it from patients, more than 300 nurses died.

Labeling nurses as ‘Heroes’ was a low blow.

It was bad enough knowing that families were coming in and stealing our PPE at the beginning. It was even harder to cope with administrators limiting PPE from the very people that deal directly with Covid. Calling nurses ‘heroes’ is just a way for administrators to sleep better at night. A hero is something we call people that are willing to go the extra mile to save a life, not a nurse that is trying to keep their job without dying for it. Which many nurses did end up doing regardless.

Doctors also placed nurses at risk.

There’s no way I will say that the nursing profession is equal to medicine. Doctors don’t understand nursing and a nurse normally doesn’t want to have that extra-legal responsibility of medicine nor do they have the knowledge to be a doctor (in legal ways). But, when you see pictures of several nurses in a patient’s room and then a doctor not willing to take the same risks as other healthcare professionals to care for patients…it kind of defeats the purpose of existing healthcare. I start to ask myself, are 5 nurses worth the value of one doctor? How about 10 nurses? When you have your hands on a patient and you’re trying to keep them alive and you look up and see that no one is next to you helping you but the spirit of Christ, you start to wonder.

Administrators continue to forget how hard bedside nursing really is.

Admins work 9–5 Monday through Friday. They get holidays off and everything that bedside nurses have to fight for. They aren’t stressed as nearly as those putting on these helmets hoping that it’s filtering Covid out from the air suction. Or hoping that the heavily used N-95 mask that is reused for weeks doesn’t make them sick. Which they have. But what breaks the camel’s back is when your freshly rested administrator walks the halls nitpicking nurses that had worked all night long.

In just these 5 things alone, nurses that already experience 300% more stress than most fields, buckle under it. Especially as a major number of nurses are fairly new. That’s another topic altogether. If this gave you a little insight on nursing, come follow The Blatant Nurse for more real talk or dark humor.

Next Step:

Read all the good things that we discovered together under the Covid Restrictions. This will take you to another website.