No work environment has changed more over the last two years than that of health care workers. If you time travel back to April 2020, you’ll hear the phrase “essential workers.” They were truck drivers, food service employees and other people we needed for society to continue to run. The most taxed essential workers were the doctors and nurses who were fighting sicknesses on the front lines. We were so thankful for their sacrifices that we paraded them through the streets and clapped from our balconies.
Fast forward to today, where essential workers are becoming a thing of the past, and we are all starting to resume our normal working conditions. The fear and anxiety around the pandemic are beginning to subside—But hospitals still have not caught up. We see staff shortages left and right. And the focus of today’s argument is vaccine effectiveness, not the continued support needed inside of our hospitals.
Lack of support for health care workers
Health care workers—particularly nurses—are shouldering the load of our massive hospital shortages. And there doesn’t seem to be a solution in sight. Whether you trust in the vaccine’s effectiveness or not, more than 64,000 people in the United States are hospitalized with COVID-19 at the time I am writing this. But with new vaccine mandates for health care workers, we are seeing these already prevalent staff shortages multiply.
Seeing hospital staff burnout firsthand
I am close to this issue and have experienced its fallouts firsthand. My fiancee is a nurse at a hospital with one of the nation’s best vaccination rates among employees. Yet, she is still working 14-hour shifts for three consecutive days. And she is still handling four or five patients in a position where she shouldn’t be handling more than two. I have seen the mental toll the height of the pandemic has taken on her, and the current situation isn’t any easier to stomach. If she is dealing with these staff shortages in one of the most vaccinated hospitals, I can only imagine the situation in hospitals firing a large chunk of their unvaccinated workers. These workers who were once “essential” are now replaceable.
Now, the Coast Guard is being brought in to replace the unvaccinated ex-workers. But even people who received proper nursing and health care training are in over their heads. But instead of focusing on vaccination arguments, I’m trying to direct our eyes back to the problem at hand.
Lack of funds and training
Unfortunately, as I said before, there doesn’t seem to be a solution in sight. After springing for expensive travel nurses and driving a massive uptick in supplies over the last two years, hospitals don’t have enough funds to bring in more workers. Even if they do, some of these situations are so dire and urgent that new staff members aren’t receiving proper training. New nurses and doctors are being thrown into the fire, and if a mistake is made, the burden is on them, not the hospital’s poor working conditions.
Staff shortages in hospitals affect workers, patients and their families, and millions of people in between. And during these times, we need to rally around the people who got us through the pandemic.
