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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Well, as you've been hearing, Mayor de Blasio and Governor Hochul last night, announced the first five cases of the Omicron variant in New York state. Four of them in the city, one on Long Island. Obviously, they're not the only ones. New rules from the governor take effect today to allow hospitals to suspend elective surgeries and take certain other actions if they need the space and staff for COVID patients. At same time, the New York State Nurses Association protested outside two Mount Sinai Hospital locations this week, because of staffing shortages, leading to overwork, burnout, and less than optimal patient care when they can't just stretch anymore.

Now, with the stresses of COVID since obviously March of last year, many older nurses have retired, more younger ones than usual have left the profession. There's also a dynamic being reported in some places that traveling nurses make a lot more money than the ones on staff. At one hospital I heard about in New England, for example, around $25 an hour for staff nurses, something like $80 an hour for the travelers.

We will get two views on nurses and hospitals and the dawn of the Omicron era here, including the latest this morning. We'll talk to a leader of the New York State Nurses Association second. First, journalist Maya Kaufman, healthcare reporter for Crain's New York Business. First Maya, is there any update from officials, since last night's news conference with the mayor and the governor on the number of confirmed Omicron cases in New York or their severity?

Maya Kaufman: We haven't gotten an update yet from the mayor or the governor, so we'll be watching for that today, since yesterday there was only preliminary information about what we knew about those cases. What the mayor stressed was that we should look to this as a sign that there is community transmission of the variant in New York City, but that we have the tools to fight it in the vaccine and in the booster. It seems like the cases that were reported yesterday are all mild. At least one of those five cases was someone who was vaccinated, but we're still waiting for more information.

Brian: Right. About the vaccinations, because that's obviously one of the questions that everybody has on their minds, the effectiveness of the existing vaccines against Omicron. The governor said the woman in Suffolk County, who had returned from South Africa was vaccinated. As of last night, I think the four cases in the city had unknown vaccination status. Is that correct or is there anything more on that this morning?

Maya: Yes, that's right.

Brian: So unknown vaccination status of the other four. Now, there was the case diagnosed in Minnesota earlier in the week, who was a person who had been in New York City for an anime convention at the Javits Center with tens of thousands of people. Do you know how they're contact tracing in that case, or who's supposed to do what if they were there?

Maya: They are supposed to be contacting people who were at that convention, or were at the Javits Center for other events around that timeframe. They have a list of attendees and the governor said yesterday, that contact tracers would be contacting people who were at the convention, and officials, more broadly have been encouraging people to get tested against COVID, especially after Thanksgiving when more people were gathering. We're likely to see cases rise from more people getting tested.

Brian: You reported that the Minnesota person only had one dose of a two-dose vaccine, and the convention rules only required one dose, after which you could enter immediately. You didn't have to wait the two weeks, for example, for what they consider full effect of a vaccination dose. You've tweeted a question that you would like to ask the governor about whether that's good enough. What's the exact question that you have in mind, Maya?

Maya: The Minnesota case was someone who was vaccinated, but the convention rules, in line with the city's key to New York City program, only require at least one vaccine dose, and at least on the anime convention website, you can see that as soon as you got your first dose, you could attend the convention. One of the questions that has been raised and that I've raised, is the vaccine mandates that we see, and especially the vaccine checks for indoor dining and for indoor events, only require at least one vaccine dose, which is something that I found interesting given that officials, and Governor Hochul herself yesterday, have emphasized that one dose of the [unintelligible 00:05:18] vaccine is not enough and that you have to get your full course of the vaccine to be able to see full effectiveness and even now with the booster. I am waiting to see if officials make any changes to those mandates to perhaps require full vaccination, rather than just at least one dose or even a booster.

Brian: You're right, that is what they did at the Javits Center at the anime convention was consistent with Mayor de Blasio's key to the city, or key to New York vaccination policy to get into entertainment venues and restaurants. It only has to be one dose and it can be right after that first dose. I think the original notion there was to use the incentive of just one dose for entry to restaurants and other venues to get people into the vaccination track, onto the vaccination track, and not put up too many barriers. The mayor might say that's been working, considering the high vaccination rates in the city right now. Do you think the system could withstand a higher bar, or has anyone commented on that, to your knowledge?

Maya: I think experts are questioning the mandates requirements for just one dose at this point, now especially with boosters being encouraged for pretty much all adults, so it is a question. For example, Governor Hochul has just said that the state is sending messages to thousands of people who never received their second dose of the vaccine, to remind them to go and get it. Of course, we have Johnson & Johnson, that's just one dose, where you're now encouraged to get a booster, but it is a question that I think is worth asking. Is there a reason now with this new variant to take a second look at that mandate?

Brian: John in Manhattan, who says he's a doctor at a major inpatient hospital. John, thank you so much for calling. You're on WNYC.

John: Hi, Brian, thanks for taking my call. Yes, I'm a doctor. I take care of hospitalized patients in a New York City Hospital, and I worked throughout the pandemic and still am working. I'm not a nurse but I think I do have a perspective on this. Throughout the pandemic, it could never be overstated, it was difficult for everybody; MDs, TAs, nurses alike, and we were all asked to care for many more patients than would be typical or standard, by standard practice or professional society guidelines, however you want to slice it.

Now that we've somewhat normalized in terms of the flow of our hospitalized patients, we're still all burned out, nurses especially. They carry a lot more of a burden than we as physicians do, because they are at the bedside for an entire shift with a patient. They're the first person responding to patient requests and patient emergencies and letting us know when we've got to come see the patient, so they've had it rough.

Anyway, we've been really understaffed, and the response, I speak to my hospital and I think this probably applies broadly in the city. The response which nursing overall would like is the hiring of additional full-time nurses, reducing staffing ratios to something that's humane and manageable. Hasn't been met with that, it's been met by hiring travel nurses. I know the difference between a physician's salary and a temporary physician position. You're paid many times more if you take a temporary job somewhere else.

It's similar for nursing. I really can't speak to exactly what the salaries are, but it creates a lot of rancor amongst staff because nurses know. Nurses are getting those offers as well, to go elsewhere. This is just one. I could go on and on and I don't want to belabor it, but this is one very small element of the larger picture. I personally see this as actually a labor issue. Simple as that.

Brian: Well, certainly the Nurses Association sees it as a labor issue, and we're going to have a union representative from them coming on in a few minutes. But from your perspective, doctor, does the hospital save money this way? Is that why they're doing it? One could argue that they could raise the salaries of the staff nurses, and then they wouldn't have to pay relatively exorbitant hourly rates to traveling nurses, but do the hospitals crunch the numbers and say, "Yes, even if we're paying $20 or whatever the right number is, to a staff nurse for an hour, and $80 to a traveling nurse, we're still saving money this way.

John: I'm not in administration so I'm not necessarily crunching those numbers at the higher level, but the supposition amongst many of us is that the hospital system might hope that for a short period of time, hiring a more expensive worker so to speak is going to-- the hope is that they're not going to be necessary long-term. A short-term overpay is going to be worth it in the end, if we can go back to regular staffing.

Brian: If they don't have to keep them on staff. John, thank you so much for your call. It's really informative for a lot of people to hear your report from that perspective as a doctor in a hospital. We really appreciate it. I'm sure the nurses appreciate the support that you're giving them in that call. Here's Alex in South Orange. You're on WNYC. Alex, thank you so much for calling in.

Alex: Hi, Brian. I just want to say I just retired. I was a nurse since 2005, started at NYU at the liver transplant unit and I started working there at $50 an hour. I moved to New Jersey. My wife was living in South Orange, worked at a major hospital here in Livingston. They're paying $43.25 an hour. The pay is crazy bad, it hasn't moved with the times. Also the staffing, the amount of patients that I would get, it would be atrocious. It's impossible and I decided to go. The cherry on top, when I heard the amounts of staff nurses that we- sorry, travel nurses that we had, and what they're getting paid was crazy. I couldn't [inaudible 00:11:42] [crosstalk]

Brian: What did you that hear they are getting paid at the hospital you worked at?

Alex: It's like almost like four times as much.

Brian: That would be like over $160 an hour based on what you said you were making.

Alex: Yes. I'd say so. All the young nurses that are graduating from nursing school are saying, "Hey, let me be a travel nurse. I'm not going to be a staff nurse." The staffing doesn't get any better because the hospital doesn't pay nurse- they won't pay their staff nurses any better. For a person like me who [unintelligible 00:12:18] at 17 years. I'm like, "No, it's not worth it." The juice is not worth the squeeze. I was working at the wound care center at this place. I had a coworker die of COVID. It's not worth it.

Brian: Are they at least, if you're still in touch with your colleagues at the hospital in Livingston, are they at least filling the staffing- I mean, the nursing positions with the travelers so if there is a surge, they're ready for it?

Alex: In certain departments they are, but in other departments, no. The staffing is just as bad. Nurses aren't getting paid. It's an unattractive position to put your life on line and also have a workload like that and not getting compensated. It's not worth it.

Brian: Thank you, Alex. Thank you for your call. Good luck to you in retirement. Let's go to a traveling nurse calling in. Carol in Queens. Carol, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Carol: Hi, good morning. Nice to talk to you all. I'm a nurse practitioner and I took early retirement in April of 2020, basically because I didn't want to die because my institution did not have proper PPE and was making no attempt to get it. What I did after that was I worked with the New York City Medical Reserve Corps as a volunteer doing testing, and also when vaccines came out, vaccinating. Since then, I've been hired by the state as a temporary worker, not a travel, a temporary worker.

I've worked at Javits. I just completed a three month course at the New York City Homeless Shelter Vaccination Project, and I'm now working in the New York City schools, vaccinating the little kids. Backing up on what the last two callers had said, I'm going to leave most of the comments to the people who are coming on to speak about the conditions of nurses in the nation, as well as in New York. I'm a member of National Nurses United and New York State Nurses Association.

Staffing in hospitals has always been a problem. It was a problem before COVID. We were chronically understaffed doing sometimes three and four other jobs, including clerical work and even cleaning. That only got exacerbated when we had COVID and things got worse and not only did we have shortage of staff, we had shortage of supplies. There is a terrible shortage of nurses.

The hospitals are hemorrhaging staff because people like me are just not willing to risk our lives and risk our patients' lives, because it's very dangerous to not have the proper staff, especially in these these days, to go into an institution that refuses to do anything to help.

Brian: What's the solution, Carol?

Carol: I think you have to separate the COVID issue from the regular issue. The COVID issue is a blip. It doesn't seem like a blip, but it is going to go away. Forces had to be marshaled to meet the demand to take care of patients in the ICUs as well as in the clinics. The clinics were put under great demand because we were seeing all the patients who couldn't normally- we were doing procedures in the clinics that couldn't be done in the hospitals because there were no beds, or it wasn't safe for people to go into the hospital to have procedures that needed to be done.

Take COVID out of the picture. You have to have enough nurses. A ratio that works to provide care for the level of patients that you're taking care of. Patients in ICUs and even in some outpatient facilities, are very ill and they need a lot of attention paid to medication administration, teaching. Teaching them to take care of themselves so they don't get readmitted. If you don't have enough nurses at the bedside in the hospital, and you don't have enough nurses in the community, you're never going to be able to give the kind of care that's required. That's why people are so demoralized and they're leaving nursing.

Brian: Carol, thank you so much for your call and your service. We really appreciate the perspective that you brought here. As we continue with Maya Kaufman, healthcare reporter for Crain's New York Business. Maya, do you want to first reflect on anything you heard from anyone in that set of callers?

Maya: Yes. I wanted to emphasize what Carol, the last caller, said about the fact that this is a longstanding issue, these workforce shortages, and particularly these nursing shortages, and COVID has only exacerbated it. That's exactly what I've been hearing from people who I've been interviewing in the industry, that it's just worse now, this isn't new. What we're seeing is that the workload is worse for nurses. Patients are sicker so they're being expected to give more intensive treatment without additional support.

Then meanwhile, you have this vicious cycle where nurses in New York are getting offers from travel staffing agencies where they might be making double and they have more flexible schedules. They might be getting offers of $5,000 or $10,000 sign-on bonuses from travel agencies, so they're leaving and they're going to the rest of the country for these assignments which means that in New York, they're having to hire the same agencies to then fill those slots.

Brian: Couple of last questions before I let you go and we bring on Pat Kane from the New York State Nurses Association. Can you explain the emergency powers that governor Hochul declared because of Omicron, called flex and surge, with respect to the hospitals that have to do with staffing and elective surgeries. Those emergency powers, flex and surge powers, officially took effect today. Do you understand them?

Alex: Yes. This applies to hospitals that are hitting the point where they only have 10% of bed capacity. This is meant to basically ensure that there's capacity for rising COVID cases. That point is where it triggers the delay of elective procedures or routine procedures, things like maybe a colonoscopy. We're seeing that mostly right now in upstate hospitals as the governor has said, but there's a couple of dozen that have met this threshold. We'll see now how that continues to progress, if those hospitals have to stop those procedures now, or if they make other moves to try and continue them.

Brian: Because our next guest is going to be from the nurses union, about staffing shortages and what they say the hospitals could be doing about them and the Mount Sinai protests this week, the recent one at New York Presbyterian as well. Maybe you as a reporter can give us the hospital side. What is management saying in response to what we're about to hear from the nurses association guests. The employers in this case, what are they saying about the severity of the shortage and what they're doing about it?

Maya: The hospitals basically have the perspective of they're bringing in travel agencies, they're doing what they need to do, but they're not really at a point where they're calling a crisis in the same sense that the unions are. There's a clash there because there's different incentives. The nurses want to make sure that they have enough nurses and that they're not feeling overworked, that they're paid enough.

The hospitals of course, are basically doing what they need to do to staff the beds, but are also saying there's a staffing shortage and a calling for the state to really intervene and contribute more funding. Basically, putting it on the government to come in, because hospitals are pointing out, they lost money during COVID, because they weren't doing outpatient procedures that are among the biggest revenue generators for them. They're really calling for funding from the state. They've gotten federal funding but that's dried up now.

Brian: Maya Kaufman, Healthcare Reporter for Crain's New York Business. By the way, Maya, here's a tweet that just came in from a listener who says they're a nurse. "I get texts every day to take travel positions paying $120 plus per hour. Where's my incentive to stay at my hospital and stay invested in the care of my community?" Listeners, we'll continue on this in a minute with Pat Kane, from the New York State Nurses Association and more of your calls, Maya from Crain's, thank you so much.

Maya: Thanks Brian.

Brian: With us now is Pat Kane, an RN representing the New York State Nurses Association, the union. Pat, thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Pat Kane: Thanks so much for having me, Brian.

Brian: We have so many good callers coming in. I see we have a recruiter for nurses on the line. We will get to you. Other nurses calling in, be patient on the phones folks, let's hear from Pat a little bit first. There was a nurses protest this week outside two Mount Sinai Hospital locations. What were you protesting?

Pat: We're protesting the crisis that nurses are experiencing with the hospital staffing right now, and really their inability to provide the kind of care that they want to provide to their patients and their community.

Brian: There was another recent protest outside New York Presbyterian, I see. Same issues?

Pat: Same issues. A lot of vacancies. The three hospitals that we were at had actually hiring freezes after the surge of the pandemic, and have a lot of open positions.

Brian: Why would they have a hiring freeze in light of a staff shortage? What's your take on what your employers are up to?

Pat: For many years, Brian, the healthcare sector had adopted a just-in-time approach to [phone rings] everything from supply.

Brian: Somebody calling you to say, "Pat I hear you on the radio."

Pat: [laughs] I know I'm so sorry.

Brian: Go ahead.

Pat: I going to mute, these devices don't cooperate. Hospitals had really adopted a just-in-time approach to everything from supplies to training to staffing. They talk about staffing [unintelligible 00:23:29] but just-in-time is a lot different than just in case, Brian. As a result, and I think others have talked about we were really staffing to a very low baseline. Just hiring the least number of nurses that they could, to provide care to the patients. I know you know for many years we've advocated for more regulation when it comes to nurse staffing. We regulate all kinds of things in health care, but the regulations concerning nurse staffing are really few and far between.

We had this situation going into the pandemic and then certainly the horrific conditions of the pandemic, just the trauma and the moral injury that nurses went through, and that really no one was prepared for, resulted in a lot of people leaving the profession. The support that they needed just wasn't there. In any pandemic, one of the first priorities has to be to keep that frontline safe, and to retain your workforce. It takes a long time to get experience and to deal with these kinds of issues. Then I think the previous caller mentioned that hospitals said they lost money, because they weren't able to do surgeries.

I know there was a lot of money that came into the state that could have been used to retain the workforce. I think they adopted a bandaid approach with using agency staff, and we saw a lot of hospitals freeze hiring. A lot of our upstate hospitals actually laid off and furloughed nurses, so people seek employment and they sign up with agencies.

Brian: The agencies that represent the traveling nurses and place them. That's an interesting slogan you have, just-in-time staffing or you're against just-in-time staffing and for just-in-case staffing. I think it's clear to people what just-in-case would mean. You have enough staff just in case there's a big surge of patients. Just-in-time, for people who don't know, is a supply chain term that businesses have been using for, I guess, a few decades now, that has to do with a certain approach to not having too much stuff on the shelves, not having too much stuff on the warehouses, not having too much staff, just enough that you need.

Just-in-time for customer demand, you have the stuff there, you have the people there. I guess when that's applied to nurses, you get a kind of walking on the knife's edge, so that when something like the pandemic strikes, they're not there just in case, certainly not as much as the union would say they should be. What is the role of traveling nurses in that scenario as you see them now? I guess from the way you were describing them as agency nurses, they're not members of the union in New York state?

Pat: That's correct. They're not members of the union, and certainly at the height of the surge, I think everyone appreciated nurses from all over the country coming into a situation where everyone in health care on the front line were really risking their own lives and their own health to save. We saved thousands and thousands of patients in New York state, but as an approach to sustain the system, it's really a bandaid, and we see what's happened. The agencies that employ travel nurses are for-profit entities most of them. As demand goes up, they charge more and more, and there's always been these kind of companies that do this work and there is a role for them, but as a way to sustain the level of staffing that we need, there really is something to be said for the healthcare workforce to be from the community, Brian. That's important. It's important for the community they serve.

Brian: I imagine the hospitals, your employers would say, "Look, we are not for-profit organizations in New York. We have financial stresses too. We're not here to make money. We're here to raise enough revenue to cover the patient care that we need to provide and to pay our employees decently." They've got a crisis on their hands with the pandemic. They see nurses leaving the profession because it's just so hard even without the staffing shortages. I don't have to tell you dealing with working in a hospital in the time of COVID, people who could leave were leaving, at least in more cases than in the past, from what I gather.

They're doing what they can to fill the shortages, and one of the callers before who just retired from a hospital, a nurse, said even with the traveling nurses, they're having staff shortages at that hospital. What's the solution?

Pat: That's true. I think we're still having shortages and I want to say, I think a lot of the retention strategies that we proposed as a union would certainly have been more cost effective than the really exorbitant rates that these hospitals are laying out right now. There's a balance there, and I think as a union, what we've advocated for in terms of retention strategies, would have been better all around, even for their bottom line.

Brian: That's mostly higher pay?

Pat: Higher pay, different retention strategies, and I think the biggest thing, Brian, is the support. We had certainly, a lot of the healthcare institutions latched on to the public support for healthcare workers and painted murals and produced beautiful videos, but those things have to come with support. That's not enough. The kind of support that this workforce needed at this time just wasn't there, and I think that was a big factor in what we saw with people leaving.

There was a period of time, it was very challenging obviously for hospitals to keep workers safe. We had shortages of supplies with PPE, shortages of testing. Once that eased up, we needed to go back to the workforce and say, "We're not going to let this happen again. You are our number one priority. You're on the front line." We need more than clapping and pizzas. They need real support.

Brian: More than people playing musical instruments and clapping out their windows at seven o'clock, as happened at the beginning of the pandemic to thank the healthcare workers. We're talking to Pat Kane, an RN and member of the New York State Nurses Association, about the staffing shortages at hospitals in our region. It's really happening all around the country. I was reading into that this morning and I can find these same stories in Wyoming and in lots of places you want to look, and with traveling nurses being used to fill in for staff nurses in light of a shortage, and being paid much, much more than the staffers. Multiple times more. Sean in Croton-on-Hudson. You're on WNYC. Hi Sean.

Sean: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian: You're a recruiter for nurses, I see. In what context?

Sean: I am. I work for Compass Healthcare recruiting. It was started by a nurse practitioner who got into the staffing side of the business about 16 years ago, because of how nurses were being unfairly treated and short staffed. She really had her heart in the right place when she started this business, and it's really grown obviously during the pandemic, and COVID has really wreaked havoc on the industry. A lot of long time nurses are just burnt out.

A lot of nurses with a lot of experience aren't getting paid as much as new nurses who are just coming out of school, as an enticement to to hire them and to retain them. You're seeing animosity from long time experienced nurses, to seeing new nurses getting paid higher and to seeing travel nurses come in and get paid higher, so you're seeing a lot of them leave. You're also running into issues of nurses who don't want to get vaccinated. The rise of telehealth, nurses want to take those jobs rather than go into the facilities.

Brian: Sean, for you as a recruiter, do you have any take on what would make the system more rational? Because if people are being paid vastly disparate wages for the same work, something's out of whack.

Sean: Yes, absolutely. I agree. That's why I think so many of them leave. They're very dedicated professionals that are just dismayed by the whole situation. They throw their hands up and go like, "Well, I'm out," or "I'm just going to sit this out for a while and wait till the COVID maybe quiets down." There's a lot of fear, especially nurses that have children, they're like, "I'm going to stay home with my kids rather than going to this facility every day." The nursing homes are especially being hard hit. Families don't want to put their loved ones in nursing homes during COVID times. They're trying to keep them in the homes, so the rise of home healthcare and field nurses going into the homes has grown exponentially.

Brian: Also puts stress on demand. Sean, thank you for all that, we appreciate it. Here is Emily, an ICU nurse in Hartford. Emily, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Emily: Hi, Brian. Thank you so much for having me. I'll try and keep my thoughts organized. There's just so much swirling in my head. I'm a nurse in ICU in a level one trauma center in Connecticut, and obviously I think we fared better than some of the New York City hospitals, but I will say, as far as staffing goes, like your previous caller said, we always run on just like razor thin margins. One coworker is sick and we're all just picking up the slack. It's not like that work can wait.

It's human beings who need to be cared for. Somebody has to do it and I would say that since COVID, you're right. People have been leaving, we're just exhausted. New nurses who came in see that this is just not what they signed up for and there are options that are not as physically and emotionally taxing. As far as travel nurses go, I mean with staffing, I've only seen travel nurses on my unit basically during the peak of COVID, in the spring of 2020.

It was just like beyond desperate times for us, so it's not like I'm seeing--

I hadn't seen my hospital trying to hire travel nurses when we are so short staffed. Right now it's like everybody says, you get texts every single day. Can you come in? Can you come in? Can you come in? They see you-- sorry I'll try and keep it together here.

Brian: That's okay, we get it.

Emily: They see you operate with a certain number and they say, "Oh, you survived this shift." This is the new standard now and it's just exhausting. Your family members at home, they don't see what you see.

Brian: Emily, what's the solution or set of solutions? Do you have any suggestions?

Emily: I honestly wish I knew. I feel like my hospital actually is trying to support us and they come to us and they say what can we do? Beyond giving me more staff, which I think they're trying, but it's hard to recruit people right now. Family members are able to come and visit now and that just adds another layer of stress. People not following mask mandates and whatnot when you're already dealing with very sick people. I really don't know. I don't know. I think the media doesn't help the spread of false narratives when you're seeing in real life people dying.

Brian: What kind of false narrative? You mean that COVID is a hoax and things like that?

Emily: Yes, all things like that and then your family members will repeat it. "I heard maybe this." You just wonder, like don't you listen when you ask me how things are at work or do you not believe me? It's very difficult.

Brian: Pat Kane from the nurse's association. Do you want to give any words of comfort or just dialogue to Emily?

Pat: Emily, thank you so much much for hanging in there and for your service and you're not alone. I think you know that so many nurses are going through what you're going through. It's really unfair. I feel like these institutions are really playing on the dedication of you and nurses like you that are so dedicated and really just want to provide the best care you possibly can to your patients. In any pandemic though, you do have to remember to put yourself first.

You have to take care of yourself. You have to take care of your family. I wish I could offer more hope, just to say there are a lot of nurses every day that are speaking out about this, despite of how worn out. I know people use the term burnout. I think it's really moral injury. That's the term that I use and despite that because, Brian, all they want to do is give the best care to their patients and their community that they possibly can. When you are a registered nurse, and I practiced for 30 years before I took on this position, and you can't do that it, it breaks your spirit.

You hear it when Emily's speaking, you hear when these nurses are speaking, this is not an isolated phenomenon. This is happening to nurses all over the country right now. It's a shame that in a country that's so advanced in so many other fields, these are things that nurses have been talking about and sounding the alarm on for so many years, Brian. Their dedication and their commitment and their passion to do this work, which is really a calling, has kept them going.

Just look at someone like Emily who's been on the front line all this time, and just isn't getting the support that she needs. One thing, it's good, I think, to come to the staff and say what can we do? But you also have to-- this is a time when leaders need to lead, and this is a time when folks have to think outside the box about what they can do to get some relief and support for their staff. The previous caller, the recruiter, talked about there were people that left that we could get back if we really spoke to them.

If they had had the support that they needed emotionally, physically and mentally. I think that's something that we're really not talking about. Where are the folks that left and how do we get them back? We need them.

Brian: Emily, thank you very much for your call. I think just saying out loud all the things that you said might be helpful. Thank you for the courage for doing that and thank you for calling in.

Emily: Thank you so much.

Brian: Good luck out there. We thank Pat Kane, an RN who was here today representing the New York State Nurses Association. Pat, thank you very much and obviously we'll continue to cover this topic.

Pat: Thank you, Brian. Thanks for doing this.

 

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