Are you a nurse? We want to hear from you: Tell us about the conditions in your hospital and what you think of this tragedy.
The tragic death by suicide of a nurse at Kaiser Permanente’s Santa Clara Medical Center in Northern California has sparked an outpouring of sympathy, anguish and justified anger against the health care system among nurses and other health care workers throughout the country.
The death struck a chord with nurses who have suffered decades of overwork, enormously intensified throughout the two and a half years of the pandemic. Nurses face a health care system that relentlessly exploits them, while continually frustrating and undermining the goal to which health care workers are dedicated: to save lives and improve public health.
the World Socialist Website first published the nurse suicide report on May 2, 2022. Since then, more than a quarter of a million workers have read and shared the report with colleagues, friends and families. Many nurses and health workers sent statements of support, while sharing their own experiences.
Tiana wrote, “Nursing is a complete and utter tragedy. Our establishment has suffered from a hemorrhage of nurses since the pandemic. It’s depressing, dirty, dysfunctional and a complete dumping ground, where nurses dreams go to to die!
“We are voicing our concerns to management so that our cries will fall on deaf ears. We are attacked daily and blamed for everything. The number of nurses taking antidepressants just to function on a daily basis is horrifying. We have gone from healthcare heroes to sacrificial lambs who work, day in and day out, to be unappreciated. I’ve moved on!’
Highlighting the difficulty nurses even face in accessing mental health services, nurse Kaiser Emily said: “Honestly, this is no surprise to any healthcare worker. My nursing colleagues all said, “I get it. None of us are shocked, just deeply, deeply saddened for our colleagues and every nurse, especially the emergency room nurses.
“What makes this even more horrific is that we cannot be seen by mental health professionals. Our Kaiser system simply does not have enough providers and, even before the pandemic, would have so few appointments that we would have to be steered towards an increasingly overloaded system. You literally cannot be seen by a therapist for months unless you say you are actively considering harming yourself in the near future.
Speaking about the need to remove the profit motive entirely from the health care system, Sally, who previously worked as a registered nurse (RN) on a geriatric psychiatry unit, wrote: “The system is so corrupt and exploited by greed. The doctor we had changed the drugs to eliminate the behaviors, delusions and hallucinations of the patients so that they lasted longer to fill the beds. Heard it was $2,800 per night billed to insurance and Medicaid. As soon as we charted the medications that helped the patients, he would change the medications to get the behaviors needed to hold them back.
“I have been a nurse for 20 years. Over the past eight years, conditions have become deplorable. Healthcare is run like what the manufacturing industry calls the “lean concept,” and it’s everywhere now. The expectation is to do the work of three people while paying one. This problem exists because health care is for-profit and CEOs and administrators are greedy.
“I also worked in a retirement home. I quit because the new expectation was to care for 44 patients. Patients were in mixed rehabilitation, dementia with behaviors, long-term care and new hospital admissions. My last post was the psychiatric unit. I was expected to fulfill my duties as a nurse, solve pharmacy problems and do admissions – and it took me about four hours to do one. [of these].
Darlene, a nurse from Tennessee, wrote, “Nothing will improve in the lives of nurses and other healthcare professionals or in the lives of patients until the benefits are flowing out of the healthcare system. I worked as an RN for seven years and as a nurse practitioner for 14 years. Meanwhile, the health system has steadily declined.
Highlighting nurses’ fear following the criminal conviction of nurse RaDonda Vaught, Dana wrote: ‘We are so understaffed it is impossible to do your job properly. We do the work of several staff members. We are CNA, Housekeeping, Admissions, Unit Clerk, Security, Dietetics. We are the doctors’ eyes and ears, the patient’s advocate, the gatekeepers. And we are treated as if our work has no meaning.
“We are so exhausted and every shift we are stuck [working] later and later, trying to draw a map of fear, if we miss something or make a mistake, we will be taken to jail. Ninety percent of nurses will quit by 2030, and like everything else in this country, the government is turning a blind eye. There is no one to take care of you anymore. Don’t end up in the hospital.
Andie wrote: “The nurses are exhausted. We are a profession that gives itself entirely to help others. So, as dangerous as we know the patient-nurse ratio is, it’s hard for us to turn a blind eye to patients who need help. It’s not the patients fault after all.
“My hospital currently has eight patients to one nurse ratio and they are trying to push a ninth. My unit is large and very often there are only four nurses to cover everything. With only four nurses for an entire ward, you can’t take the time to get to know your patients, educate them, let alone clean them properly on your own.
“If a patient becomes critical, you are already leaving 31 patients in the hands of one nurse. It’s terrifying to think it will always be like this. You ask for your hours to be reduced because you can’t handle the stress of the job, and they emphatically tell you “no”. When you explain to them why, they ignore you.
“A lot of our nurses went into the supply rooms to break down and cry. I’m honestly surprised there aren’t more stories like this, and that’s a shame. We were considered “heroes”, but no one recognizes that we are truly human like everyone else. »
On Friday, former Tennessee nurse RaDonda Vaught faces conviction for a medical error that tragically claimed the life of a patient. Vaught’s prosecution and conviction is an effort to scapegoat a nurse for the crisis of the entire healthcare system. The Socialist Equality Party is calling for his conviction to be quashed and his license reinstated.
The growing anger of nurses and other health care workers must turn into an organized movement against a social and economic system that subordinates health to private profit.
