Hi, I'm Lucy, a producer with Opinion Video. When I first started hearing about a nursing shortage, I thought that I understood why that was happening: Burned-out nurses were finally succumbing to exhaustion after a two-year battle with the virus. But after reaching out to over 50 nurses I learned I was wrong. In reality Covid had just exacerbated a problem that existed long before the pandemic. in our video, five of the nurses I spoke with explain in their own words how corporate greed has created a critical shortage of bedside nurses, and what can be done to solve this crisis. I'd love to know what you thought of our film, and answer questions about how we reported and produced it. Leave your comments below

" there's not a shortage of nurses there's just a shortage of nurses willing to work under those conditions." Well stated.

Every time you hear about a worker shortage (be it fast food, nurses, teachers, IT, etc.) know that there really isn't a shortage. It's always due to horrible working conditions.

I think it’s honestly nuts that nurses and doctors work 12+ hour shifts. How is that safe for anyone?

I will never forget during my orientation at my first nursing job out of school the administrator said “nurses are our biggest expense”. Hospitals look at nurses as an “expense” that’s what we are to them. What is a hospital without its nurses? I would like to see them go a day with no nurses… an hour… how about just 15 minutes with no nurses.

Nurse here ✋🏽I love my job. But if you think hospitals are bad, wait til you hear about Skilled Nursing Facilities (nursing homes). The working conditions are incredibly unsafe for everyone.

“To maximize profit, hospitals….” That right there is the problem.

Became a nurse in 2016. My wife and daughter are nurses. The amount of corruption, waste, incompetence and greed is astounding. I and my wife are looking for different fields away from nursing.

Very informative. When they mentioned the 25 million dollars spent in one state to defeat a ballot measure that would've created a staff/patient ratio law, I couldn't help but to think "I wonder how many nurses salaries could be paid with that 25 million..."

The worst part is, even if severely understaffed, the nurse is still liable for any and all incidents.

When my wife was in a terrible way in the hospital I had to step outside the room for a second only to find a nurse crying in the hall. I held her, (years before covid) and asked her what was so terribly wrong. She had 15 minutes left on her shift and three more patients to see and there was absolutely no overtime allowed and she didn't know what to do. A few years later at another hospital, my wife seriously ill again with flesh eating bacteria on her entire leg, the nurse came running into the room saying she had to be to xray immediately but the wound required a special dressing before she could be moved that takes a bit of work. She pulled back the sheets and I had already done the complete wrapping (many times throughout the day due to massive fluid leakage) and the nurse cried out loud and hugged me. I too had no idea how terrible hospitals are treating the staff. And this was 10 and 15 years ago. This is the immoral and criminal behavior of the profiteers who have crossed all borders of decency and compassion. No corporate profits are worth even a single life. God help us all if this is allowed to continue.

The nurse talking about the patient soiled in urine. I can’t tell you how many car rides home I’ve cried because of this. Something so simple as helping someone to the bathroom and I just couldn’t do it because I was too busy. It breaks you down after awhile and makes you feel like a bad person.

I am a nursing student. No one in my cohort wants to become a bedside nurse and if they do, they only want to do it for 2 years max. We all want to specialize and leave the bedside as soon as possible. It’s crazy how no one wants to do bedside anymore due to the abuse that nurses face. It’s really saddens me because patients need our help. But I have to take care of my mental and physical well being first before I can help others.

As soon as they said 'flex staffing' my heart dropped. I work for a big retail company and they do the exact same thing, even the same phrase. I can't believe they're implementing it in HOSPITALS of all places. The level of corporate greed is at an all time high and yet there are people who still believe that it's laziness driving the great resignation - no! It's the refusal to get exploited and say enough is enough. The US needs something or someone to relieve this huge amount of tension, I don't think it's going to turn out pretty otherwise...

I have been a nurse for 15 years and left the bedside because the staffing levels were incomprehensible. Expected to care for 9-10 patients on an acute care floor. You feel like you can’t give the care that patients deserve and it takes a huge toll on your mental health. It’s also not safe at all.

Hospitals in the US are a joke!!! I’ve been an RN for over 20 yrs. If the general public knew what went on behind those doors they would stay home! The conditions we are forced to work under would be considered torture in any other field.

One of the things that i struggled the most in the first years as a social worker was the open acknowledgement and acceptance of burying us with a high caseload. Like it was so normalized and joked about. Like social workers can do great work in the lives of the people we touch but the amount of work that we are given makes us practically useless.

I've been a cop for over 18 years. The first thing I learned out of the academy was never give a nurse a ticket.

I’ve worked 25 years as a nurse. While on night shift in a critical care unit at a university med center, there were only 3 ICU beds open in the ENTIRE hospital. All 3 open beds were in my 8 bed cardiac ICU. We started out the night with 5 patients, so we were staffed with 3 nurses for the night. We pointed out to the nursing supervisor that we would almost certainly get admissions, as the only major hospital in the city. We were told, “We can NOT staff for what MIGHT happen.” During the night we admitted 3 POST-CODE patients! These pts were highly unstable & required 1 to 1 nursing care. It was a nightmare shift with 3 nurses dealing with 3 pts, who were actively trying to DIE. There was no way we could help each other. Our five stable pts got virtually NO CARE during that night. Administration’s response to our distress: “You handled the situation. No one died.” My response: “I QUIT.”

The worst part is most administrators are nurses themselves. Shows how toxic the career is. It’s nurses doing it to nurses. You don’t see them stepping up to take care of patients when staffing is short either.

Very informative thanks for sharing. I quit my job as an RN last two years ago after almost 17 years in the field. It was not an easy decision, but life is too short to dread going to work everyday. No amount of money can buy real happiness, but friends I'm not asking you to resign from your job or abandon your business but be wise!

I’ve been a psychiatrist for 20 years and this is what drove me away from working in hospitals: Constant pressure to understaff inpatient units. If our census went down even for a few hours, they’d immediately start sending nurses home. Later, when we got slammed, we’d be horribly understaffed. Some of the places I worked even had a grid which directly linked the number of nurses on staff to how big the administrators bonus would be (less staff = more bonus). Obviously this nonsense should be illegal, and belongs on a used car lot, not in a hospital.

My dad was an air traffic controller in NYC and he explained to me that before the national strike in the the 80s controllers were not allowed to say they couldn't take anymore airplanes and were just forced to handle as much traffic as was thrown at them. Now, they are allowed to halt traffic they are responsible for whenever they feel they're maxed out. A similar kind of massive rule change is clearly need in hospital administration.

I actually had a CEO tell us that we can't solve a problem by throwing staff it. The problem was we were short staffed leading to patients and staff getting injured by violent patients. This was 10 years ago. They have been purposefully short staffing to save money for years. I worked at a jail that contracted out their medical services and the company paid the fines for low staff instead of meeting the contract staff requirements because it was cheaper. We all got tired of it and the entire staff, including the Doctors, quit. together. It was magic and they lost their contract. Our BONs are not fighting for us. I swear they are just there to collect our fees and go after our licenses because most of them fight against laws for proper staffing. I've been a nurse for 13 years and I'm thinking of getting out and it has nothing to do with the patients.

I've been only a nurse for 14 years and I want to quit today. This is the only job that i went home with a shiner and concussion and was told by the manager that it's just part of our job. In the hospital, i was taking care of 6-8 patients. In the nursing home, I'm responsible for 30-40 patients.

This was an issue in every aspect of Nursing. For decades. I worked Home Health. For years and I WAS REPRIMANDED MANY TIMES for, refusing to take over a certain amount of patients. YEARS PRIOR TO COVID. Then you are labeled insubordinate. Because, I refused to put my patients lives in danger because, my supervisor ( the company REALLY) wanted to see increased $$$$$$$$. However, if something is missed or you do not have enough time to provide QUALITY CARE, YOU will be the person to lose your license. THE EMPLOYER / COMPANIES/ HOSPITALS who, are PUSHING too many patients on you will let it all roll into the Nurse.

I have been and still am a cardiologist. Started private practice 1995. What you are seeing here is true. I have seen the entire, slow and steady, change from stand alone hospitals to multi-billion dollar corporate hospital chains. These corporations are using the inherent dedication and oath of nurses, doctors (all staff) to their advantage. Corporate care is policy driven at the expense of its own care givers. My patient load is at max and every minute of the day is packed with "just one more patient." This has gone too far, risky. During the pandemic I found it disgusting and patronizing for a hospital corporation to industrialize the saying; "HEROS WORK HERE." What they were really saying was; "SUCKERS WORK HERE."

I started in nursing in 1966 as a nurse’s aide, then LPN, then RN. This has been going on since I started. Why is greed allowed to do so much harm?

This is not just hospital settings it’s in nursing homes mental health wards correctional facilities and even home health care agencies.

This is why medicine and education can't be privatized. Money can't be the incentive

Being a nurse, knowing this is so true. America Healthcare System sucks. I’ve even change my career direction because I am tired. Prayers for all my nurse colleagues 🤍

They don't care. They know the problem. I was a CNA for 15years. 1 aide on the floor with 40 people. You do the math. They choose money over life.

Former nurse of 13 years here. Nothing will change anytime soon. I haven't practiced for almost 6 years now and all I see are things getting worse. I am terrified for my family and for myself for when they get sick and have to go to the hospital. America has a third world healthcare system in many parts of the country.

As an RN of 34 years who left the profession, I can attest to the fact that hospitals have been putting patients lives in danger for years by understaffing on shifts. This is true no matter if the hospital is for profit or non-profit. This must change!

My girlfriend used to work in the emergency room. Recently, the hospital was purchased by a venture capital firm. ALL ER doctors working there 10+ years were fired because “they were paid too much”. Doctors who had saved lives in the hospital for 30 years were fired or forced to take a 80% pay cut. Who replaced these doctors? New college grads with no experience. Fatalities in the emergency room increased 4x. There is a lawsuit in San Diego about this currently.

My job gave me 3 critical patients - 1 w DKA Q1 ACCU checks, Q4 labs (no lab techs. Lab took 4 hours to result critical labs. Pt went into Vtach for a minute. K was 7 not like we would know), 1 patient had to get a stat CT because of mental status change, the other non compliant, the other with chest pain all of a sudden. No techs around to help. So I had to get a EKG myself until someone in the hospital could help me get a “stat” CT. Yeah right. Not to mention I’m breastfeeding and no one’s around to watch my patients so I can pump for 15 minutes so I leave with engorged throbbing boobs. If my family was in a hospital I would be turning them, bathing them, cleaning them up myself. These nurses do not have time and things DO get missed.

I was an RN for 46 years, and then an NP for 27. I still have nightmares about hospital nursing in the 80s and 90s which is when I left. I wake up and think that someone forgot to tell me in report that I had a patient, and they went without care for 8 hours. We have been understaffed for a long time. Yes, you may make $120/hour but the hospital is still saving money because you are doing the work of at least 3 people.

The fact that people question nurses stories of employer abuse and aggressively embrace a blatantly corrupt healthcare system is breathtaking.

I don’t even have words .. I am a nurse and I’ll tell you what .. nursing school never prepared me for the near constant verbal abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse I receive from patients not to mention the god-awful staffing they nobody seems to care to fix… and sadly the one doctor on our unit who advocated tirelessly for us -even writing the chief of nursing etc warning them that morale was low and that staffing was egregious and something needed to be done got fired bc the other MDs felt threatened by his advocating for us nurses ..

My heart goes out to all the nurses out there. Ya know the ones that have a heart for humanity and wiped butts for years as a cna just to be spread thin by hospital admins. Don’t let them take advantage of your love for people. I know I couldn’t do that, so I commend you for everything you do.

It’s not just nurse to patient ratios but the work of lifting and moving them for care. One nurse can’t move a 150-200 pound + patient. If they are small with fractures they need more than one person to give care. The administration included aides in with the staffing ratios. We were left with more patients, to help each other we had to go away from our patients to help. I was a nurse 40 years. I remember how much better it was before the corporate model and profits, market shares became the goal.

I worked as an RN for 21 years and walked away 6 years ago. Everything in this video is spot on. Nurses don't deserve the abuse the hospitals dole out on a regular basis. Today, whenever I hear someone talk about going to nursing school, I try my best to convince them otherwise. I let them know in no uncertain terms that they will be treated like sh*t. It's a noble profession, but it shouldn't require any nurse to lay down their life for it. Nothing is worth that.

Nurse practitioner I talked to yesterday said, "This is a money hungry admin issue, not a health issue." when speaking about the pandemic.

Was a hospital nurse for 16 years, last 5 were in the ER. I've been peed on, had poo thrown at me, been cussed out, attacked ... but also met amazing people, gave life and hope to patients at their wits end and celebrated patient milestones with frequent flyers who were now part of the hospital family. I MISS being an ER nurse, I miss the patient care. The thought of going back to the hateful system of the hospital where managers are determined to make you work a skeleton crew, where management is focused on positive patient reviews but isn't concerned about the patient. One hospital I worked at said they couldn't hire more staff until we met QUOTA!?!?! The people running healthcare don't care about their staff or the patients. I left due to health reasons in 2020 but now, everytime I try to apply for a hospital position, I get physically ill. I MISS taking care of patients, the good, the bad , they were mine. But the thought of going back to that environment, leaves me cold. I am one of thousands of nurses that have left the system ... a system that was always broken. We have 4 nursing schools in the area of the hospital that was on a hiring freeze. Nurses often have to drive hours a way to find a job. The whole concept of a nursing shortage is a joke. Long before covid, hospitals began treating healthcare like a factory where you force emplyees to work super short-staffed and then, when you do finally hire people, you don't hire as many as left.

I was an aid for a little over a year and i was punched , kicked, slapped , and threatened by patients. Not to mention being constantly exposed to illness and have 20 plus patients to myself with toxicity to match. I was so happy to quit

My mother desperately tried to find a way out of nursing during her 30-year career. I lost track of how many hobbies she tried to turn into a business as her ticket out. She called nursing The Golden Handcuff. She made six figures, but hated her job. I wish I had taken her attempts to leave more seriously, now I am a nurse who dreams of a way out.

I wonder if some of the Filipino nurses they tried to talk to for this video was pressured to not say anything. I know for a fact that some of my Filipino friends are pressured not only by the management but also by their own families. Filipino culture tends to say "keep your head down, don't complain, and just keep working." And it's so sad.

As a nurse who has been away from bedside nursing for over 15 yrs, this is difficult to watch. I pray for my colleagues and encourage each of you to protect you!

Great documentary! When I was an LPN, many people were shocked when I tried to explain that there is no nurse shortage in the US. It's literally a shortage of positions caused by corporate greed. This is not a problem isolated to hospitals. There are RN graduates who have to move to towns 3-4hrs away just to find full time jobs. I had no problem leaving the medical industry and never looked back. Some of my patients cried because I was caring and good at my job. But the level of corporate greed I faced daily was absolutely demeaning and disgusting. Patients are nothing more than assembly line products to bill insurance. If you spend too much time on a critical patient who needs more care than others, then you are a liability. Meanwhile you are still accountable for the care of patients, even if the medical directors/staffers make it literally impossible to administer treatment safely. They will throw you under the bus without hesitation. One NP left because the company wanted to make her signature into a stamp so that other employees could simply sign off on things for her. They weren't interested in hiring other doctors or NPs to take on the load. Just finding more shortcuts.

Another good point to touch on is what the hospitals pay the nurses. I have been a nurse for six years, you will be working in unsafe conditions for your patients and your license. I know of a few hospitals that wouldn’t even give nurses a 1% raise the year of 2020. When COVID initially spread through the country, each nurse was terrified in COVID rooms. Most doctors wouldn’t even go into them. While we were out of N95 masks, being told it’s okay to wear a bandanna, hospitals couldn’t even care to give a 50 cent raise of compensation. I worked as a nurse in PA and was living paycheck to paycheck and each year in the newspaper we saw that the CEO would be walking away with millions. Hospitals have the money to pay nurses they chose to leave them understaffed and underpaid.

This is both heartbreaking and disturbing. I had no idea things were this bad. Much love to these health care professionals. They are awesome.

I was a nurse for 16 years and quit right before Covid because I was burnt out. “The system was already broken; Covid just made it worse”; this is the absolute truth and I will never go back, despite the high pay.

Been a nurse for 20+ yrs. I’m burnt to the core on all of it!! I want out of healthcare and don’t ever want to think about a hospital again. I’ve worked on every unit, in countless leadership/admin roles for an endless amount of hours.

This is heartbreaking. Our country is failing everyone so hard. I don’t know how people can treat their nurses so poorly.

I retired early as an RN for this exact reason. I convinced my daugher NOT to go into nursing because of this - she is a speech therapist now and very happy with her career

Can’t wait to leave bedside. I’m so sick of poor working conditions, abuse from patients and their families, and not feeling like I can give the care that is needed.

THANK YOU! There is NOT a shortage of nurses. There never had been. There IS. a shortage of hospitals willing to train and staff nurses! #TRUTH

I graduated from nursing school in the fall of 2019, shortly after, I started my career working in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. As a new nurse, I was given assignments that went beyond my level of experience simply because I was another licensed professional who was legally allowed to take care of patients. After working in these environments, I became extremely anxious and at times letting that anxiety fog my critical thinking. Making a mistake is a nurses worst fear, not only because it’ll affect you as a nurse personally and professionally, but could possibly harm the patients that you care for.

As a nurse I have no words to express how true this is. I've been the nurse crying on the way home because I couldn't handle another day of risking my patients' lives, I couldn't handle the corporate greed that was focused on "customer satisfaction" and would punish us when patients abused us because they weren't satisfied with their experience. We are tired, demoralized and done.

Okay, next part of this conversation.... How can WE as patients (consumers) help hold them accountable? Can we demand nurses without overage patient count for our own safety? If we all do more of this, will they listen? I just stopped nursing school, as I am horrified at the view on the horizon.

Oh yes I can completely verify what is being said in this video........just the other night I was left on a unit with 28 patients I had 1 nurse helping me but she had her duties of making sure the patients were getting their meds in a timely fashion. It's not just hospitals but rehabilitation facilities like I work at. ✝️❤️☮️🙏🇺🇸

I have been in the hospital five times. The last time was five years ago after a near fatal head on collision caused by a junkie. My nurses kept me alive for nine days in the CCU untill I was stable enough for major thoracic surgery. I'm alive today because of my nurses, they are angels and they deserve to be treated with the respect they fully derseve.

Stop paying healthcare “administrators” more than frontline healthcare workers!

I worked for Providence Health and this is unfortunately how their executives behave. Its sad how poeple like Rod Hochman and Sarah Vaeezy treat their healthcare workers.

When they said that the hospital lobby spent $25M on ads to block minimum nurse to patient ratios, and then they played a portion of that ad at 5:44, my blood boiled. It's so manipulative, and anyone without the full story would hear that ad and believe it was trying to protect patients from "grandma killers" when it's only protecting shareholders.

I have a cousin who was the best RN you could imagine. After 15 years, she quit to go work in a dialysis clinic as an admin. because being a floor nurse drove her into a mental breakdown. I swear to God, we are turning into a third world country. Teachers are walking off the job. Now nurses. This is just terrible.

I am a critical care nurse with 43 years of ICU experience. I retired 4 months before covid hit and I thank god everyday that I did. There has ALWAYS been staff shortages and horrible nurse:patient ratio's. Nurses make up the bulk of a hospital's budget and without us nurses the hospital cannot function. It is always the first budget to be cut when the hospital claims to be in the "red. It is a well documented fact that a patients outcome in the ICU is directly related to the nursing care received. Less nurses = increased mortality. Nurses are ALWAYS understaffed and we are told to do the best we can, but if something does go wrong we are the first ones hung out to dry. Nurses are the ones that are expected to do the jobs that no one else wants to do whether it's cleaning a bed, floor, fixing equipment malfunctions, transport patients. I have even used my own money to run across the street to the deli because the cafeteria is closed and a patient is hungry. Perhaps the management at the top need to take a pay cut and less financial perks. When the CEO or CFO retire they get the best healthcare insurance, stock options and generous bonuses. Every nursing contract we fight for includes fighting for better nurse:pt. ratios and nothing ever changes or improves and I've been doing this for 43 years. I see and hear what my fellow nurses are going through with covid and it breaks my heart. Nurses want to give excellent nursing care, it's why we chose nursing. Covid has killed many of us and made even more sick. We are verbally and physically abused and there is no other industry that this would be tolerated. If a nurse were to talk back to a patient or their family who are abusive we would be reprimanded by a supervisor or even fired. Things need to change and maybe the government needs to do something to force hospitals to change.

AMEN. ITS ABOUT TIME THIS ISSUE WAS ADRESSED !!! I was a nurse for over 50 yrs !

That's exactly it!!! Hospitals and Nursing homes are trying to run on a skeleton staff. We all get tired of doing the job of 3 Nurses !!!! When we get so tired and worn so thin, this puts our Nursing license on the line. Med errors can be easily made simply because of impaired judgement of Nurses being so tired and fatigued.

Started crying while watching this because right now my staff to nurse ratio is 14:1 and sometimes I don't see a patient for hours if they're not actively dying. It feels like I only have time to throw pills at my people and run to the next. Sometimes an entire day goes where no nurse is on the schedule at all and we're having to be begged to come in on our days off, having to weigh our own health vs our patients, and calculate if we can even give decent care after 50 hours a week. Every day I see the girls I went to nursing school with post on Facebook that they're quitting the profession. And every day I get told we're getting another admit despite my CNA being out sick with covid and me being 2 hours behind on the morning med pass. But somehow I have to get it all done because if not me, who will?

Health Care in the United States is SCARY.

This video is spot on. I've been a nurse for 53 years. The changes in medicine/nursing are heartbreaking.

“Servant Servant, get me some coffee” one patients kept yelling at me & then I even got spat on 🤦🏽‍♀️ So when he said “ The H is for hospital, not hotel” than really hit the nail on the head for me. This video was really needed. I don’t think enough people actually understand what our role is and how much we go through in the field.

Please, please, please let me write a piece on hospital greed for NY Times. I will do it for all of my colleagues. I’ve been a nurse for 30 years. My whole family are nurses with advanced degrees. The things we’ve seen should be tried in a criminal court.

I was an RN in 1970, but couldn’t stand the way patients were treated so I became a doctor to help people my way. I teach prevention & nutrition, something not allowed under insurance. I quit insurance but still help people. The insurance CEO’s, hospital administrators & Doctors employed by them are taking multi million dollar salaries but no help for the nurses! Sick care alone does not work. If you really want to learn how to help people and be independent, learn bio resonance. The body has the ability to heal itself, and it can be done with vibrational energy. Let’s change the way Medicine is being practiced by really helping people, not making more people addicted to more drugs that don’t really help!

My sister is an ER tech. She says nurses are only allowed 3-4 patients. But administration forces them to have 6-7patients on any given day. And people die because the nurses are spread too thin. It’s hard to watch.

I have been retired from bedside nursing 5 years after working since 1973 as an RN and this article is so true. The violence in the job is there and the abuse of nurses by the administration is forever. If nurses go on strike to get better staffing then the nightly news guilts you back to work, when strikes are over there is punishment by the administration. Floods of memories are coming back to me of what I have seen. But anyway if I was a nurse today, I d quit too. Bless our health care workers.

Please remember that the loss of these knowledgeable nurses means a loss of passed on knowledge to us nursing students. CARE WILL SUFFER!

As a Respiratory Therapist, I take care of 16 ventilator patients when I work at a long-term ventilator facility. And still, we get no respect.

Thanks for doing this profile. I left ICU nursing last year after just 4 years in total of being a nurse. My primary department was neuro, where I've been called all the words in the book and also kicked/bit/scratched etc. by patients who may or may not understand what they're doing and the impact it has on us, and verbally abused countless times. But that's honestly the least of the concerns like this video said and generally wasn't bothersome. On top of the trauma of watching patient after patient die at certain facilities (and seeing how many of those deaths were unnecessary, often related to being short-staffed), not being to be able to care for every patient the way they need to and deserve to be cared for wrecked me. And then, being blamed if something even minor wasn't done by the next shift/administration/managers, despite not being able to take a single break overnight and staying over regularly to document everything that was necessary. In addition to nursing staffing, hospitals short nursing assistants and even doctors to the point where you can't even get a doctor on the phone sometimes when theres a deterioration or code. As others have said the situation in nursing homes/SNFs is even worse. After I quit last July, I was having dreams regularly about coding my ICU patients (doing CPR) until December and still feel d

My best friend and brother who was an RN in Ohio who deceased in 2021. He was a great nurse. Staffing shortages were exposed greatly when the pandemic hit here. There were times he would see 16 patients in one shift and then have to pick up a second shift. I recall his wife saying he was just getting stretched so thin. He turned to sleep aides to help him get through with little to no sleep. Then the stress of the pandemic started. He started seeing more patients die than what he was ever trained to deal with. It ate him alive. When he went to the hospital admin, for help, he was denied leave. To an extent, I understand why time off was denied during a pandemic. Yet I don't understand why a hospital would deny leave or sick time to one of their nurses that they saw was struggling. He committed suicide in October of 21.

I was in the hospital for 3 weeks on bed rest with my son. The nurses always commented that I was the easiest patient because I never asked for anything. I knew they were busy and overworked and didn't want to bother them. During that 3 weeks and then my son in the NICU for 8 weeks, all of the nurses were wonderful. All of them. The patience and understanding and support we received from the nurses, I will never forget. Nurses are special people, treat them with respect!

Then you become unhirable because once you have positioned yourself in an area of your specialty for so long now they think that you can't cross train anywhere else. Which is ridiculous cause by law every job has to give you orientation every job has to show you their new equipment their new software their new documentation if brand new nurses were allowed to pick up travelers positions and work then experience nurses should be able to do the same.

This is happening; people are dying due to underfunding of hospital staff and facilities in the US. The medical system is broken and legislation is needed to address this. I had to go to emergency room twice since 2020 and I felt lucky to get out alive.

I was a ICU RN for 13 years and I quit at the beginning of the pandemic because Kaiser initially told nurses they would fire them if they wore masks to work because it would scare the patients. I was DONE! You take so much abuse as a nurse from everyone. Your coworkers, patients, families, management… the list goes on. I would feel guilty taking my breaks and lunch. I would leave every day feeling like I messed something up because I was so busy and stressed throughout the day. I’ve had glasses thrown at me, called all sorts of names, yelled at, spit at, pinched. It’s just too much. I couldn’t do it anymore. I was exhausted. There was one day when I was flexed between 8 different assignments in one day. I will never go back to nursing unless I’m absolutely desperate.

As a teacher I feel you. You're called a hero only so they can demand heroic levels of patience and resiliency when they could easily make it manageable and livable. People shouldn't have to be heroes to exist in a job. I can't pray enough for you all in healthcare.

Former Hospital Admin here. Sadly, these nurses have no idea HOW hospital greed is destroying nurses. Watch this video folks, and realize it's worse than what this video shows.

I am a hospital RN for 31 years in NYC. Both of my daughters are hospital nurses. So far one of my granddaughters is in college and on track to go into Neurology as an MD. I have other family members in the profession. My mother was a hospital nurse. I feel these stories to my core. I agree with all that is said here. I can retire at 65 in 5 years and I cannot wait to do so. I COULD retire in 2 years but I am hoping to make it to 65 for pension reasons. If I could retire with financial security tomorrow I would. But I do not know how long I can go at this level of short staffing. I am burnt

As a former RN and Physician (emergency medicine) I saw what this video discusses all the time while at the same time the hospital CEO was making 1.5 MILLION per year and who was frequently out of town playing golf. Time for nurses to strike?

My mom has been trying to convince me to get into nursing for the past year and this is exactly why I couldn’t do it. I’m not physically, mentally or emotionally strong enough to deal with this in all honesty. These nurses deserve better and I really hope things change because they are doing a job that we all need to survive in society.

Exactly why I will NEVER do bedside nursing again!

Oh man. I got screamed at so bad multiple times and looked down upon. Racially profiled. Burnt out and stressed out multiple times that I acquire a bad habit of smoking while I was in Saudi Arabia. Worst times, probably during the covid pandemic when I saw people die left and right. I have never been physically assaulted at work, thank God. But I am always, always, always on my toe especially that I am working in an Emergency department here in Canada. Godbless all the nurses around the world, we need better compensation for the work we do.

I am so glad this is FINALLY coming to light. I have been a nurse for 10 years. I had nightmares almost every night, severe anxiety before going into work. I thought I was just weak. The truth is we were all feeling it. We were abused from all sides. Yelled at and sometimes physically abused by patients, forced to work severely understaffed, have management gaslighting us, calling us at 5am begging us to come into work on our days off, belittling us. I left and I am now a nurse care manager working from home. Something needs to be done asap. It’s a felony to attack a bus driver in NYC, but if a patient attacks a nurse, management asks us to write incident reports on what we did wrong. There needs to be staff limits and laws in place to protect us. We are not hero. We are human . We need to be treated as such or the future of bedside nursing is not looking too great. They are offering us all this money begging us to come to work and most of us who left would NEVER go back to bedside.

I’m a new grad and only lasted 6 months in the hospital setting. The expectation on nurses is ridiculous, unrealistic, and incredibly dangerous. I could not give good care to that many patients. I didn’t want to stick around and wait for a tragedy to happen on my watch. Nurses deserve a break to eat.

12 hr shifts mean you have 1 less nurse for a 24hr day. 12 hr shifts are NOT 12hrs, but 13-14hr shifts. If you work 3 or 4 12hr shifts in a week (Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon) in a row, you are so exhausted, you can only collapse when you get home. Remember that 12hr is NOT 12hrs but 13-14 hrs, add in your commute home & you don't have maybe 8 hrs to get something to eat, sleep & get ready for the next shift. When I first started in CriticalCare (1982), you had 1 - 2 patients, keeping in mid that these are the sickest patients in the hospital. When I left (2000) you had 2always, maybe 3 plus being the charge nurse of the unit which required you to help with other patients & trouble shot any problems you had. The people who would mandate you staying over the end of your shift because there was no one to replace you went home after their 8 hrs were done. Frequently nurses from other units without the necessary skills were pulled to the Critical Care areas. It is impossible to care for a patient on a ventilator with multiple pressers to keep their blood pressure within limits for life, plus monitoring their cardiac monitor, if you have never done that, but that is often the case.Never mind the frequent CODES to bring back the patient from death. The nurse on the floors don't have it easier. Their patient load is inconstantly increased, plus admitting, transferring & discharging patients require a lot of paperwork. I, myself have been in the hospital 2X in the past year & I barely saw the nurse. There is so much emphasis on documentation, that you barely have time to do the task you are documenting. The pagers & the cell phones the nurses carry, do NOT help, as they only distract her from doing the task (medication, dressing change, IVs, etc) that they are currently trying to complete. The salaries off the CEOs of large hospital chains are obscene, considering how there main job is to squeeze out as much money as possible from insurance companies & Mediare/Medicaide with as few people as possible. A shiny new unit/ER/Surgical Suite is no good if you don't have staff. The hospital police themselves with JCAHO with scheduled inspections announced weeks, sometimes months in advance. The states are no better, in that they don't look unless there is a report. Patients are vulnerable & do not realize they are getting substandard care & staff are fired if they report anything. The United States does NOT have the best healthcare in the world & one of the reasons is the lack of nursing care in ALL institutions, not just hospitals.

I have been in healthcare for over 30 years; medical assistant, LPN and an RN for over 20 years. I have applied to the post office.

I always wanted to be a nurse, my entire life. Glad I was too broke to go to school for it cause these past 2 years completely changed my mind about it. They’re “sooooo important” but are completely disrespected and neglected. Good job america.

I have been hospitalized for at least 30 times in my life, and in the ICU five times. I have seen this problem for over 25 years. Nurses are totally overwhelmed. I have been neglected in the hospital setting, been in a soiled bed for hours, etc… because my nurse has been busy with their more serious cases. I don’t blame them. The hospitals are full of greed.

This is a terrible fact. What worsens this on another level is the support staff are also critically short on staff. Our hospital is chronically short of Environmental Services personnel, Kitchen staff, lab techs, etc. We don't have a clean hospital. I have worked in environmental services for 25 years and have never seen it like it is today. We are always in a state of being 10 to 15 people short. The average age in our department is somewhere between 55 to 70 years of age. I truly love the nurses in our hospital, yet they are also very demanding of the support staff and are always shocked when I tell them how short staffed we are. In all honesty I would take a bullet for any nurse in our hospital, yet, they don't seem remotely bothered about our circumstances. We cannot do without each other and its painful.

Woooo!!! Left nursing after 5 years of critical care. NEVER BEEN HAPPIER. What a joke of a work condition. To anyone going into medical field for either the science or to help people, It's just not worth it anymore... Trust me.