*Disclaimer: I will not waiver that personal autonomy and informed choice is a human right. No one has the right to coerce, threaten, mandate, or legalize away the right of each of us to choose our risk. I do not have to agree with your choices to support the right to determine what risks and benefits are acceptable in your decision-making.
There are many activities that humans participate in where they have chosen their comfort with risk, yet other humans find those activities too risky. I have no desire to skydive, swim with sharks, free climb a cliff, ride a motorcycle, race a car, use tobacco, use marijuana, etc. For me, those carry too much risk. However, I had several children; I became a nurse, stopped for and ran toward accidents, broke up fights, and defended a victim, putting my safety at risk. Personal risk evaluation is just that, personal. No one can tell you what risk ratio is appropriate for you.
The hospital is a hard place to be for staff and patients right now. We have lived in a constant state of stress and anxiety. Restrictions in the name of Covid and safety have removed support from friends and family that often grounds us and helps us feel safe when we are sick. We have forsaken therapeutic touch and empathy for patient isolation and PPE, setting restrictions and limitations where people need humanity. The fear and politics of Covid have created a system of isolation so complete that some patients would rather go home to die than sit behind a closed door fighting to breathe. The very thought of being isolated from friends and loved ones is so debilitating that patients refuse medical help or leave AMA to continue to have access to that support system.
Nurses are used to working around hospital politics and red tape while advocating for their patients. The current environment goes beyond these limitations and creates daily moral and ethical challenges that drain us emotionally and psychologically. Every shift comes with the knowledge that we are short-staffed and do not have the resources to care for our patients the way they need us to care for them.
I know some amazing nurses, and yet no superpower on earth can make time slow or create resources out of air. While doing our best is not enough, it is all we have to give, and we have given our all every shift for the past year and a half. We are required to stretch ourselves beyond the stretchable in the name of sacrifice. What started in March 2020 has turned into a constant draw of energy that has brought us to our surge capacity both emotionally and psychologically.
Interestingly one of the arguments for our continued sacrifice comes from the choice to become a nurse, as if obtaining a nursing degree automatically makes one a permanent martyr for the sake of the medical system’s greater good. I don’t know about you, but no nurse on this planet could have foreseen Covid when they chose nursing for their degree. The very fact that choosing nursing as a profession equates to sacrifice of ones mental and physical health highlights why nurses are leaving bedside critical care and choosing travel and contract nursing. AT some point, we have to take our advice and focus on our physical, emotional, psychological, and familial health.
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