I want you to imagine that your career infuses anxiety into all aspects of your life. You anticipate your shift with anxiety, knowing that you will be required to complete the work of two to three people, and that work involves making sure other people don’t die.
Now think about asking for help. You are told time after time that help is coming, but it comes in the form of a small task completed. Ultimately, the pile of requirements, aside from that one task, are still your responsibility. Imagine doing this for years, expecting support but always being told, we don’t have enough staff.
Now imagine the greater population voted against an opportunity to give you consistent help. They prioritized the status quo because change is challenging, but in reality, you need change or you might break. The administrators spent millions to make sure you wouldn’t have the law behind you when you said the work had to be divided between more people. Nobody has your back, and you make mistakes. You are held responsible for the mistakes you made because it doesn’t matter to those who created the system that the system failed you. You should have been more vigilant.
The vote lost by a landslide. People know the system is broken and already costs too much, but they can’t imagine paying any more than they already do, so your cause is mislabeled as greed. Administrators continue to make millions, and you get by because you have learned to be scrappy. Your clients see that you can’t be doing your best work, but they still demand perfection. They blame you for these problems because you are the person they see. You are the person that listens to them. Sometimes they understand it’s out of your control.
Imagine you report to the people who told you a law to support safety in your profession wasn’t possible. They recognized that there was a problem, but now that they aren’t threatened with a law anymore, the urgency disappears. They can ignore the problem. Nothing changes for you. You are told you have to be tougher and “not care” so much. But how can you do this job without caring? Your guilt turns inward, and you begin to think you just aren’t cut out for the demands of the field. You cut back your hours or start a new specialty altogether.
We still need support. Don’t forget why the conversation started. I urge all of the hospitals who said negotiations for safe staffing should be between their administration and nursing to actually do something about it. The problem has not been fixed by making no changes. You have won the opportunity to make change under your own terms. Make people your priority again.
Emily K. Sheridan
Holyoke