I remember before I became a nurse, I was hopeful, excited, and eager. Then after the shock of just how much blood, sweat, and tears goes into being a nurse, I became more focused, sincere, and above all, utterly exhausted.
Working 12 hour shifts is hard, sure. And nurses are exhausted from working long hours, definitely. But it’s not working 12 hours that has us exhausted necessarily. It’s the work we do within that 12 hours. The work we do without getting to urinate or eat in 12 hours. The running back and forth, the million phone calls, the lifting, and pulling, and medicating. The hundred tasks we accomplish in 12 hours, and don’t even have time to sit down for 15 minutes without being interrupted. The care we provide for sometimes upwards of 7 patients simultaneously. That is what is exhausting.
In one shift in the ER, I could take care of 30 patients, sit down long enough to chart before getting my next code stroke, and only eat some crackers all while continuing to work.
There is no down time. And when my shift is over, I’m done. I’m ready to crash. But, wouldn’t common sense tell you that if I had a decent break during that shift, maybe it wouldn’t be as exhausting? Maybe I could go home, make dinner and actually enjoy my evening with my family, rather than half-showering, eating a bowl of cereal, and passing out in bed?
It doesn’t take a genius to know that any type of work can be tiring and tough but getting a break would make that work easier to handle. At least we would be stepping away from the bedside for a few moments to regroup. We could eat, without interruptions, and use the bathroom without getting three phone calls.
The reason we don’t get these moments to eat and pee, is typically because there is not enough staff to cover us and continue to care for our sick patients. Sickness doesn’t wait. A patient in rapid A. Fib who needs a Cardizem drip can’t wait for me to eat my lunch before they get they’re medication. And if the nurse on the team next to me has a septic patient with tachycardia and hypotension, she can’t exactly watch my team for me while I eat, can she? Because she’s already busy with her own patients! And what if she doesn’t have any really sick patients, then she can watch my team, right? Well maybe for 10 minutes until she gets a sick baby who needs immediate care and then she calls me while I’m on break to tell me I need to come back. Oh, you think the charge nurse or float nurse will come by and let me take a break? Wrong.
Lunch breaks are not priority. How can they be? How can we eat when there are patients dying? Sick, bleeding, febrile, vomiting, incontinent patients who need care don’t wait for nurses to eat. So what’s the solution?
First, I’ve never worked in a critical access hospital so I can’t speak from experience. But I can speak from coworkers who have worked in those places, and according to them these hospitals can be the sole of the busiest. They may have little staff because they don’t expect to get busy every day, so when they do, it’s a nightmare.
Second, I work at a Trauma II hospital where it’s always busy, always chaotic, always tense. I rarely get breaks and when I do they’re almost always interrupted. And when I come back, I have even more work to do because the nurse who covered me already had a million things to do herself and wasn’t actually able to help me.
My answer is this: more staff. More money for Medicare/Medicaid. Less politicians who don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.
Hospitals won’t hire more people because they won’t spend the money. They won’t pay competitive wages to keep staff who are burnt out from not getting breaks, and those nurses are leaving because there’s not enough staff as it is, therefore they’re not getting breaks!
We work 12 hour shifts because it allows continuity of care for our patients. It allows us time off to regroup, catch up on housework, see our families, go to classes required for our jobs, renew our million required certifications, and get away for a long weekend if we need to because what we do everyday is not just physically exhausting, it is mentally and emotionally exhausting.
I’ve heard enough of Senator Walsh’s excuses. I don’t care if her mother was a nurse. Senator Walsh is not a nurse. She hasn’t worked in difficult conditions without basic human needs such as food and the ability to pee. She hasn’t been in a nurses shoes.
She is a politician talking out both sides of her mouth without a clue what she is saying.
As a nurse, I want to work in safe working conditions with safe patient ratios and adequate staff. I want to have a chance to eat while having adequate coverage of my team of patients while I’m gone. I want to be able to go to the restroom, maybe twice a shift, without feeling like I’m abandoning my patients for that 3 minutes that it takes me to pee.
And I want know-nothing politicians who can’t hold an intelligent conversation about what nurses do on the daily, to stay the hell out of making my job harder. We sure as hell don’t play cards and if we did, we’d be playing with our patients who we’re there to care for in the first place. Senator Walsh, it’s time for you to fold!
Piss off, Senator Walsh
Sincerely,
All Nurses
Life and Times of a Registered Nurse 