In her nine years as a labor and delivery nurse at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Destinee Griffin has called in sick to work just once.
She keeps a box of the cards patients have written her, thanking her for helping to bring their babies into the world. But over the last 20 months, working conditions and patient care have deteriorated so drastically, she said she’s willing to walk off the job if things don’t change.
What started as a beautiful day on the water for Rob and Tammy Brown quickly turned into a fight for Rob’s life, after his leg got caught in their boat’s propeller.
“In those moments, he knew he was very close to dying,” said Tammy. A registered nurse, Tammy told WKRG she worked to keep her husband as calm as possible. “I said ‘Baby we got this, we got this, calm down, we got this.”
A nurse opposed to getting vaccinated against COVID-19 filmed herself apparently being walked out of her workplace at a Kaiser Permanente health facility by security personnel as she spoke about religious beliefs.
“I am being escorted out of Kaiser Permanente Hospital for my religious beliefs – because I don’t want to get the jab,” she said. “And I asked all day for someone to explain to me why my sincerely held religious beliefs were not good enough for Kaiser. And no one was able to do that for me.”
In a few days, 900 nurses the state funded to help during the worst of the delta wave of the COVID-19 pandemic are leaving dozens of hospitals across the state. Their contracts end Oct. 31.
In a small corner of the lobby at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, a cluster of nurses and doctors gawk over a glass table.
"Sand mandalas can take months to create. This one will take four days," said artist Katie Jo Suddaby.
The tiny vibrations of the chakpur artist tool Suddaby is using sort of puts you in a trance as the tool shuffles sand to coat the surface.
Suddaby is creating sand art in the form of a mandala, a circular symbol, using sand to create stillness and a moment of zen for these frenzied front-line workers.