(NewsNation) — Health care workers have gone above and beyond for their patients, battling through a global pandemic and countless natural disasters.
NewsNation examines whether America is failing them.
Florida nurse Sarah Warren told NewsNation’s “CUOMO” on Tuesday that the conditions in many U.S. hospitals are “treacherous.”
“There’s no amount of money that can make up for a loss of dignity in your work,” Warren said. “When you are working harder than you’ve ever worked before, and you’re still seeing poor outcomes for your patients because you don’t have adequate resources … that takes a toll on you.”
Critical care nurse Lauren Leanders said that her and her colleagues were unprepared during the pandemic and that they didn’t have proper medical equipment to protect themselves.
“I think nurses really lost trust in our hospitals and in our health care system throughout the pandemic,” Leanders said on “CUOMO. “Why were we so unprepared? Where was our PPE? Why were we still wearing N95s for seven days at a time?”
Leanders says the health care system holds the responsibility to try to earn that trust back in a meaningful way and rebuild the nursing nursing workforce.
Minnesota ICU nurse Kelley Anaas and other health care workers went on strike for nurses’ rights. She stressed the importance of nurses to “CUOMO,” saying the profession is at a breaking point. She says as more and more resources are removed, patients are going to struggle.
“We walked out to say, ‘You need us.’ We need to be well staffed so that we can do the best for our patients, not the bare minimum so that you can save $1.”
Will B., an RN from Abilene, Texas, called into “CUOMO” and said “we’re seeing states throw away money not helping the people and then we’re still getting all the bad rap, so as a health care professional, we just appreciate you, because there’s a lot of issues out there that you’re talking about that nobody else is.”
