Hi My Fellow Nurses,

I honestly don't know how to encourage all of you in the trenches at this point! 

With Omicron bearing down at every turn, my heart goes out to all nurses everywhere at this critical time in our careers. 

I am sure that you are being affected professionally as well as personally, and things are really, really tough.

Last month, I honestly did not think that the pandemic or its effects on healthcare and nurses could have gotten any worse.  And then winter hit and Covid just kept on giving!

The only good thing that I can report is that it is predicted that Omicron will go away as quickly as it hit and spread.  So here's to a truly happier February.

Despite all of this doom and gloom, I am more optimistic about the pandemic. 

I wrote an article last week for AllNurses.com outlining my reasons for the increased positive outlook. 

In addition, I also came up with a few out-of-the-box solutions to help ease the nursing shortage.

I asked for feedback from fellow nurses.  Although my ideas did not seem to fly with some nurses, what followed was a firestorm of opinions, concerns, rantings, and thoughts from nurses of all backgrounds about the reasons for our flagging health institution.  

"War on Nurses" was the top trending story and the thread took on a life of its own with some very valid points highlighted.  Allnurses facebook also featured the story with many good solutions offered by nurses and CNA's.

I include the article in its entirety here for you to read.  Make sure that you continue to the comment section at the end of the story for all of the valid and insightful remarks from nurse readers.  I found them to be, on the most part, enlightening.

War on Nurses from allnurses.com

Nurses certainly know the real reasons behind our ineffective medical institution.  Now we just need to come up with a way to have the state boards of nursing and hospital administrators consider what nurses think can help fix our broken healthcare system.

I welcome your thoughts also or feel free to join in the conversation at allnurses.com.

Here's to better days, sisters.

Donna