BY: CLAIRE KIM
“I certainly never thought there would be a day as a nurse that I would be filing for unemployment, so it’s quite surreal for all of us,” said Jess Poole, a nurse anesthetist from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
Well, amidst the coronavirus pandemic, this quote has become the new reality for many health care workers across the United States. Thousands of nurses, practitioners, and other non-specialized medical personnel have been laid off over the past month; a statistic that continues to increase in real-time. Under the federal realm, it’s become a burden to maintain such clinical caretakers primarily because of the urgency for medical facilities to focus all equipment and rooms for coronavirus patients. Hospital beds, in particular, are in dire supply along with several other items like surgical gowns, gloves, masks, and respiratory protective devices that are necessary for effective treatment. It’s under these circumstances that in-clinical care has to temporarily be halted to exert maximum efficiency in curing those diagnosed with COVID-19. Diagnostics, appointments, and other short-term services need to be postponed if more lives are to be saved immediately.
The health care sector is definitely struggling right now. It’s an emotional period in which patients are dying, doctors are dying, and nurses along with their jobs are dying as well.
claire kim. 