A Renewed Appreciation for the Resilience of Nurses

WOC Nurses near and dear to our EHOB hearts, we marvel at the tenacity it took to keep the patient’s skin on the radar.

Hero – a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements or noble qualities when faced with adversity.

No one really signs up to be a hero. Because, let’s face it, where there are heroes, there is usually adversity and who wants adversity? But nonetheless, there is a subset of individuals whose mere profession regularly places them on the cusp of the ‘h’word…even in a good year. Nurses! But with labels come expectations and the last thing anyone wants to do is increase the pressure already weighing heavily on our nation’s healthcare workers. At the very least, however, expressing appreciation for a job well done is certainly in order.

When workloads all but tripled overnight, employees in all industries were taxed. But when the added duties involved human lives, there was clearly more at stake. As far as pandemics go, there weren’t many, if any, who had firsthand experience. Healthcare workers who may have participated in disaster preparedness drills never banked on the size and severity of Covid-19. Adversity.

But the show must go on and so it did. Amidst personal fears, anxiety and alarming shortages in personal protective equipment, nurses everywhere reported for duty. But the number of staff in the hospital halls were noticeably getting slimmer. In 2021, one out every five nurses quit — a direct side effect of the pandemic1. And while we can’t fault those who had just had enough, our hats go off to those who stayed. Courage.

And to those WOC Nurses near and dear to our EHOB hearts, we marvel at the tenacity it took to keep the patient’s skin on the radar. Knowing that discounting pressure injury prevention altogether would cause potentially irreversible long-term effects, clinicians versed in wound care got creative. With basic science in their back pockets, nurses stepped up the game on manual proning while protecting patients’ skin in the process. Outstanding achievement.

The ‘invisible threat’ plaguing the world was not so transparent when it reared its ugly head in hospitals coast to coast. Nurses everywhere had ringside seats for the devastation caused by COVID-19. They didn’t teach this in nursing school. And while we understand now that getting labeled a ‘hero’ may have led to additional anxieties it was certainly never the intention. As we close out another surreal year, we’d like to simply say thanks. While the medical products and device industry at large can certainly help the cause, nothing takes the place of good nursing care. Admiration.

morningconsult.com/2021/10/04/health-care-workers-series-part-2-workforce/