2021
Hello ,
I'm a week late getting this out, but I can't let National Nurses Week go unnoticed, not after the tremendous effort and sacrifice of nurses throughout this pandemic.
National Nurses Day is celebrated in the United States on May 6th, and the week honoring nurses continues through May 12, the birthdate of Florence Nightingale.
It's never lost on me that the date we honor nurses is also the date US forces surrendered Corregidor Island and 89 American military nurses to the Japanese in WWII. I wrote that story here...
More than two thirds of the captured women remained in a Japanese prison camp for three years, nearly starving to death before the end of the war. More on that below.
But first, the staggering truth about our nursing crisis, simmering before the pandemic, now reaching a full boil.
Most Trusted Profession in Trouble
Last year, for the 20th year in a row, nursing ranked as the Most Trusted Profession
And yet, these professional men and women, particularly in hospitals, tending those of us most critically ill, are overworked, underpaid and coping with rising stress on the job. Including verbal and physical attacks.
Is it any wonder they are leaving the profession in droves?
Photo thanks to Laura Johns (Pexels)
During the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses who faced great risk of contracting the virus on the job, also endured sharp increases in physical violence and verbal abuse. They continue to bear the brunt of patients' families who are frustrated and helpless as they observe their loved one sick and dying.
Medical professionals are also dealing with an uptick in patients or their families demanding specific medical treatments their doctors do not believe are warranted.
But overall, from February to June 2020, 44.4% of hospital nurses surveyed reported they experienced physical violence and 67.8% reported verbal abuse. In the same online survey, one in ten nurses agreed that during the pandemic, they found it more difficult to report these incidents to management.
Burned out nurses are leaving the profession while large numbers of nurses are reaching retirement age.
“Nurses are doing 16-hour shifts without getting something to eat or drink sometimes because we’re so busy,” according to Stephanie Lander, a float nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose, California. “This pandemic has really worn us down, mentally physically and emotionally. It’s really taking a toll on nursing as a whole profession.”
Photo thanks to Zakir Rushanly (Pexels)
What the nursing shortage have to do with you? It's frightening to look at hospital medical care in the years to come.
Copious numbers of scientific studies show high workload, low staffing, and long shifts contribute to higher rates of hospital deaths. These conditions can result in nurse errors and poor clinical decision-making. Higher nurse-to-patient ratios result in increased numbers of urinary tract and surgical site infections.
In addition, overworked, stressed out nurses are more likely not to recognize changes in patient condition and/or not adequately communicate such changes to doctors. These events are referred to as failure to rescue, a category of hospital deaths that can be reduced, even prevented, by lower patient-to-nurse ratios.
Projections warn that by the end of this year, we'll be short 1.1 million nurses in the United States. Nurses from foreign countries are being recruited to fill those jobs, while it's estimated the shortage of nurses worldwide approaches 13 million.
Florida nurse Ranson Thomas puts the blame for squarely on our for-profit healthcare model where needs of patients and staff is secondary. Hospital corporations, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare equipment manufacturers, etc. are in the business of making money.
"And they’re very good at it," Ranson says. "In 2020 at the height of the pandemic, HCA Healthcare, one of the largest private hospital corporations in the U.S., gave it’s CEO Sam Hazen over $30 million in compensation! This while HCA has laid off nurses and support staff and engaged in
vicious union busting."
Another major factor in the scarcity of nurses is a shortage of nurse faculty. People who want to train to become registered nurses are turned away across the country for lack of room in bachelor's degree programs. In addition, new graduate nurses are arriving on the job with less clinical experience than in the past.
One of the most frightening aspects is the hemorrhage of experience as long-term nurses leave the workforce. Even before the pandemic, an increasing number of nurses were retiring. That will continue. More than half the registered nurses in the country are more than fifty years old.
National Nurses Week ended yesterday, but it's not too late to show appreciation if there's a nurse in your life.
Sources
https://nurse.org/articles/nursing-ranked-most-honest-profession/
https://nursejournal.org/articles/post-pandemic-nursing-shortage/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34344236/
https://therealnews.com/were-at-a-crisis-level-nurses-take-on-union-busting-bosses-over-short-staffing
https://www.anpd.org/blog/the-nursing-shortage-a-healthcare-crisis---february-2022
https://www.socialistalternative.org/2022/02/16/the-nursing-shortage-worsens-a-crisis-in-healthcare/
https://nursejournal.org/articles/the-us-nursing-shortage-state-by-state-breakdown/
https://www.aacnnursing.org/News-Information/Fact-Sheets/Nursing-Shortage
US Nurses Surviving Captivity
At first, US Army nurses felt great relief when US forces surrendered Corregidor to Japan. More than anything, they wanted the killing to end. They had too many wounded men to adequately care for. They were running out of food and medical supplies, and the soldiers on Corregidor were running out of
ammunition.
The nurses hoped the Japanese would honor Geneva Convention rules for humane treatment of prisoners of war, said Hattie Brantley, a young nurse from Texas. “We were concerned and worried, but we thought maybe things would be for the better. Were we ever wrong!”
The women were allowed to care for their patients on Corregidor for about a month and not abused by enemy soldiers. When they were shipped off the island and loaded into trucks, the believed they were being driven to a military prison camp where they could continue to take care of their patients.
Instead, the trucks pulled up at Santo Tomas, an internment camp packed with thousands of civilians. Hattie refused to get down from the truck. Her protest didn’t last long. “When you have somebody with a bayonet telling you you're getting off, you get off,” Hattie
said.
US Army nurses Hattie Brantley (right) and Floramund Difford (left) on the day they arrived in the Philippines, 1941, Photo courtesy Lt. Col. Dana Difford.
The Army nurses volunteered to work at the makeshift hospital in the camp treating civilians. The tried to make the best of the crowded, monotonous conditions, thinking they might be liberated soon. Weeks stretched into months, one year and then two.
When American Forces started to re-take the Philippines in the fall of 1944, conditions worsened for the captives. Hattie hated having to bow to the Japanese captors, but most difficult, was the lack of food and the lack of medical supplies.
"We were there with the sick all the time and we were concerned about them.... We had maybe 500 calories a day from September '44 until…early in February of '45.
Many patients died during this time, several a day with beri-beri and just malnutrition.”
Below, Nurse Dorothy Davis, 27 (left), at Santo Tomas with her sister, Eva Grace, after liberation. Nurses lost up to 60 pounds while in captivity.
Pure Grit would be an inspiring gift this graduation season for a student completing nursing school or a young man or woman considering their future.
My past couple weeks were filled with fun tasks and events!
I had a long chat with the producer working on turning Pure Grit in to a limited TV series. And I was interviewed about Catherine Leroy by the B&H Photography Podcast. The podcast hasn't "dropped" yet as they say, but I will definitely share a link here in the newsletter when it's available. As for the TV series, don't call us. We'll call you.
I enjoyed a great time at Christ the King school in Richland, Washington, where it just happens the rockin' librarian is my sister Virginia Gutierrez Titus.
This was my first school visit since before the pandemic and I really had a good time talking to 6th and 7th graders about courageous women who helped make history.
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