Nurses quite literally have their fingers on the pulse of patient care — and we’re sounding the alarm: There are not nearly enough of us at the bedside. What this means in ERs and on hospital floors in our area, throughout the state and even across the nation, is that nurses, already physically and emotionally drained from a year and a half on the front lines of a pandemic, are being asked to care for more patients than is safe for either the patient or the nurse.
When this happens — when nurses are routinely required to care for more patients than is safe — it’s called chronic nurse short-staffing, and care suffers. Nurses suffer, too. These are our stories.
