IMPACT in Healthcare writes this letter to answer the call to celebrate Nurses Week. We write to you in solidarity and as colleagues in the struggle to provide safe patient care. We have been wrestling with the idea of celebration within the Nursing profession at this time.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the idea of Nurses' Week. It has potential to be an opportunity for other Healthcare Workers and the public to acknowledge the dedication and skill of Nurses.
Unfortunately, Nurses’ Week (and Healthcare in general) has been taken over by predatory corporate executives who show Nurses just how much they don’t appreciate or even understand their work.
Nurses’ Week has been weaponized by executives to minimize and patronize the highly skilled job of Nursing and highlights their lack of respect for the profession. Gifts from employers to Nurses are generally tone-deaf and disrespectful. Superficial celebrations paired with cheap trinkets are corner-cutting substitutes for what Nurses actually deserve: system change, improved working conditions, and higher compensation.
The impact working conditions have on the Nursing profession must not go unnoticed. The Nursing profession is suffering from an exodus of new and experienced nurses because they are overworked and understaffed. Nursing is unable to grow due to corporate greed pressuring nurses to do more with less.
Nurses are asked to prop up the system in order to serve the bottom line.
Nurses are forced to fight an uphill battle without the proper support to do their job, providing care for patients, something the healthcare system has lost sight of entirely.
Nurses watch as: Patients suffer at the hands of insurance companies and facilities as the lack of price transparency bankrupts them. Patients ration insulin so pharmaceutical companies can turn higher profits. Administrators make 6 or 7 figure salaries off the backs of underserved patients and underpaid healthcare workers. Lobbyists spend millions to maintain a horrifying status quo while actively blocking the change we need.
Nurses experience moral injury from watching patients suffer due to unsafe working conditions as the system that was intended to serve all only serves the wealthy.
Administrators will argue that Nurses are appreciated. If this were true, it would be reflected in their working conditions. Nurses need and deserve safe working conditions, the first step of which is federally mandated staffing ratios. Nurses also deserve workplace violence prevention, mental health resources, fair compensation, and systemic change. This is how Nurses will truly be appreciated year-round.
We call on all Healthcare Workers to demand more for Nurses and Patients during Nurses’ Week.
Join IMPACT in Healthcare to transform medicine into a system that works for both Healthcare Workers & Patients.
5/5/2023