- My heart was just broken and I was diagnosed with PTSD from my job.

- You're supposed to care about people, but also is trying to make us feel like it's normal to not get compensated.

- Holy spirit activate.

- Oh no.

- Holy spirit activate.

- Oh no, oh no.

- Nursing is a tough job and these ladies have had enough.

We're going to hear from a few nurses who are fed up.

- Thank you so much for always working extra.

You are a one of a kind, keep being, um, here's a pen.

- We're gonna talk about the nursing shortage and why so many nurses are quitting.

But first I gotta get a look on the line.

- Shea, what is going on?

How are you feeling?

- I am tired.

(laughs) I just got done three shifts in a row, three 12 hour shifts in a row and I feel hung over.

Like, all the nurses are just like super tired.

We're losing multiple nurses per unit a month.

It just feels like everyone is like trying to find a life outside of nursing because when you work those three in a rows, it's just really hard to come back to life.

- You've probably heard scary stories or seen scary videos during the pandemic of hospitals running out of beds and patients having nowhere to go.

Well, reality check.

A lot of hospitals weren't running out of beds, they were running out of staff.

A lot of times, nurses, to take care of patients to put in those beds.

- Absolutely, one of my friends, she got into a bike accident and she's at the hospital and she's like, you know, they keep on telling us that there's such a long wait for a bed, but I see all of these empty beds, and I was tryna explain to her, cause she's a waitress.

I'm like, you know how in waitressing, you might have 10 open tables, but, they still have a wait because there's only one or two waitresses and each waitress has a certain amount of tables she can handle.

It's the same thing with nursing.

- Let me tell you, I work at, if I have to count that right now, four hospitals, every single floor has an issue with nursing shortages.

- It really did not start with the pandemic.

- It did and there are two things to kind of pay attention to in terms of the long-term nursing shortage.

Number one, the population is getting older and as people get older, they may need more medical care.

Also as nurses themselves get older and retire or other nurses just leave because they don't wanna do it anymore.

The pipeline from nursing schools, isn't keeping up with the demand.

- But the pandemic really blew things up.

By one estimate, one in five healthcare workers left their position since the start of the pandemic.

- And then most demanding jobs in the hospital, it might be even worse.

According to a recent survey, two thirds of critical care nurses said they were thinking of quitting.

Now, hopefully this doesn't actually happen, but it does suggest that something is really, really wrong.

- Now I'd like to hear from some other nurses who are in the thick of this.

So that you guys know it's not just us going crazy.

We're gonna talk to Sarah Flanagan from Fort Myers, Florida.

She's better known on Instagram and Twitter as shesinscrubs.

Hi Sarah, well, it's so nice to meet you, as a fellow nurse, hey girl.

We just wanna talk to you today about nurse burnout and some of our nursing shortages.

So tell me, how long have you been a nurse?

- So I've been a nurse for the last three years and I've been working through COVID for the last two years, kind of.

- So tell me your story, how you got to that point and at what point the burnout just was like, yeah, I can't.

- I was working full time up until January of 2021.

After 2020, I was like, this is not sustainable for me, for my body, for my relationship, for my connection with my family, my friends.

I had an experience where we did have to code someone who had been there for multiple days and sadly, that person didn't make it.

We were also incredibly understaffed.

So, we had three nurses less than what we should've had and so, everyone's exhausted, everyone's frustrated.

People are worried about their patients in other rooms who aren't being looked at because everyone's dedicating themselves to this one patient who needs us in that moment, in a critical moment, and, feeling like, what if we weren't in this situation?

What if we had the staff that we needed, how many people would maybe have made it through this?

My heart was just broken and so that week I went back to therapy and I actually got started on an antidepressant because I'm like, this is not normal and I was diagnosed with PTSD from my job.

- I'm borderline speechless, but I also am so appreciative of people like yourself, who are willing to add trim some transparency to what you've been going through and to like, just to lay out a very real raw story about what nurses dealt with throughout the pandemic.

Now, someone else whose content I really appreciate in the health Instagram ecosystem is nurse Allie.

- And take a fluid will decrease your urine, but it shouldn't be nothing.

- She's a hospice nurse in Boston and before that, she's had some pretty tough jobs, like for example, she worked in a prison.

- So, at what point do you feel like you've experienced burnout?

- I've had days where literally, especially during COVID because no facilities were open for us to use the bathrooms, where I gave myself a kidney stone because that's how it is and it was like that before COVID, where you literally put your patients over your own health and wellbeing.

- Look, it feels like the culture of healthcare has changed.

When I first started, you got what you got and you didn't get upset.

It was the culture of nursing to just do what you had to do, whether you were injured, whether you didn't get a lunch, you just did whatever, and I'm so inspired by these young nurses, just like saying like, no, this is not okay for me.

- But I feel like some, something has really exploded over the last few years, and it's like, healthcare knows we're altruistic.

They know that we're gonna do everything we can to take care of patients.

So they abuse that to just jam pack our schedules, especially nurses.

- We're naturally empathetic people.

So we feel bad if we don't go above and beyond for like literally everybody, I feel like we're all people pleasers.

Do you know what I mean?

- A hundred percent know what you mean.

- It puts that guilt on us that this is supposed to be your calling, you're a caretaker, you're supposed to care about people.

But also is trying to make us feel like it's normal to not get compensated for going above and beyond.

- That's why the term healthcare heroes could be a little scary 'cause it implies super humanness that we do not have.

- So the problem is out there, it's everywhere.

Now, how do we fix things?

- So here's what nurse Alice Benjamin had to say.

She's been writing and talking about this for over 20 years.

- Yes, so, there's a lot of talk out there which is good, but not only should we just be talking about it, we gotta do something about it.

We gotta talk to our politicians.

We gotta talk to people who are movers and shakers who can actually implement change.

- Maybe having a standard as to how many patients each nurse can have across the board, and it not being specific to a certain hospital and how they feel about it.

- That would be on my wishlist.

Now I live in California, so, we do have state mandated ratios, but not every state does that.

So we really need something to be created where all of the board of registered nurses are on board with this, all of the governors, all of the states, all the hospitals are on board with.

A nurse cannot take care of this many patients or at least with this high acuity for safety reasons.

It's not that I just wanna break and kick my feet up.

I really wanna do what's safe for the patient.

We definitely need adequate staffing because when we're not staffed properly, errors happen.

Medical errors happen, bad things happen.

Nurses get tired, they get burnt out, they quit, they leave, and which further exacerbates the problem.

- If there's any silver lining in talking about the nursing shortage and how big this problem is, it's the opportunity to spread awareness and make change for the better, because we don't fix this now, it's only gonna get way worse in the future.

- And a huge thank you to Allie, Alice and Sarah.

Please make sure to give them a follow.

- And before you go, we need your help.

We want you to be a part of PBS Digital Studios annual Audience Survey.

Your feedback is clutch because here's how it works.

If you tell us what you're interested in, we will give you more of it.

- You even get to vote on potential new shows.

There's a link in the description below.

If you have a few minutes, we would love your input.

- And as always, we wanna hear from you.

So leave us a note in the comments that you have a nurse or doctor go above and beyond for you.

Are you a healthcare professional experiencing burnout yourself and you're like, ah, I quit.

In any case, hit us up on all social media platforms at PBS Vitals.

Until next time.

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