Nurses are Leaving in Droves. Why Should you Care?

Because your life might depend on it

Hospitals, clinics, and nursing facilities are experiencing extreme shortages of nurses. No one is applying, and aggressive recruiting is not performing so well. Nurses are just quitting their jobs, finding different ones, or leaving the profession entirely. The bulk of working nurses are old and retiring in masse. Covid has a lot to do with this mass departure but is not solely to blame. The reason has been years in the making. The nursing profession has been grossly mismanaged as an essential public service.

500K nurses are leaving the bedside by the end of 2022

Nurses' dissatisfaction is well documented and mostly linked to a lack of support and public appreciation for their work. The for-profit health care model in the United States is also a significant source of discontentment among nurses. It fails to deliver adequate public health and discourages nurses from providing quality patient care, another enduring grievance.

What is nursing

Allow me to offer an insider's view into what nursing is. Nursing is at least an unconventional profession. And just like it is impossible to know what parenting is unless you are one; It is impossible to know what nursing is unless you work as one. Let me try to explain.

Nurses are required to be compassionate and work in dangerous and hostile environments at times. The complexities of care are chaotic, unstable requiring diverse skills. To name a few: education, critical thinking, psychological sturdiness, good judgment, and patient care experience. In resume, to be a nurse requires a unique set of talents, yet the public and industry greatly misunderstand or appreciate these fundamental benefits nurses provide them with.

Nurses are unrecognized at best. At worse, they are physically and verbally assaulted by patients. Violence Against Healthcare Workers is a worldwide phenomenon. Nurses have been hit, kicked, spat on, or verbally threatened with death. According to a study from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, health care workers account for approximately 50% of all victims of workplace violence.