(NewsNation) — Healthcare workers have done their best for their patients, battling through global pandemics and countless natural disasters.
NewsNation checks whether America let them down.
Florida nurse Sarah Warren told NewsNation’s “CUOMO” on Tuesday that conditions in many US hospitals were “dangerous.”
“No amount of money can replace the loss of dignity in your work,” Warren said. “When you work harder than you’ve ever done before, and you’re still seeing poor outcomes for your patients because you don’t have adequate resources … it costs you.”
Critical care nurse Lauren Leanders said she and her colleagues were unprepared during the pandemic and that they did not have the proper medical equipment to protect themselves.
“I think nurses have completely lost faith in our hospitals and in our healthcare system during the pandemic. Why are we so unprepared? Where is our PPE? Why are we still on N95 for seven days at a time?”
Leanders said the health care system has a responsibility to try to regain that trust in a meaningful way and rebuild the nursing workforce.
Minnesota ICU nurse Kelley Anaas and other health care workers are on strike for nurses’ rights. He stressed the importance of nurses to “CUOMO,” saying the profession is at its breaking point. He says the more resources are removed, the patients will struggle.
“We walked out to say, ‘You need us.’ We need to have good staff so we can do what’s best for our patients, not minimal so you can save $1.”
Will B., an RN from Abilene, Texas, called “CUOMO” and said “we see the state throwing money away not helping people and then we still get all the bad rap, so as healthcare professionals, we just appreciate you, because there are a lot of problems out there that you talk about that no one else has.”