Issue link: https://nnumagazine.uberflip.com/i/1503465
But we are union nurses, and we don't do the whiny pity party thing. We can all see that nursing is at a crossroads, and we want to offer some positive words of affirmation. But these are not Oprah-eque, Gwyneth-like affirmations that involve aromatherapy candles and wellness de-stress bracelets. Oh no. These are truth-to-power affirmations for today's union nurse. These are things that all nurses must hear to stay true to themselves and true to our profession. These are words to embolden you and provide a touchstone when you encounter all the obstacles our employers push in our nursing path. We hope they spur you to action in your hardest moments. You play a valuable, critical role and are irreplaceable. nothing can replace the connection of in-person and hands-on experiences. From our nursing education, clinicals, to early on-the- job practice, we learned not only how to perform basic nursing skills but also to use all of our senses during the nursing process to observe for subtle signs of physical and emotional distress and then intervene appropriately. As we spend more and more hours at the bedside, our intuition grows and sharpens. That intuition—the knowledge of what to pay attention to when we use our senses to assess patients—is invaluable and irreplaceable. Simply put, there are no shortcuts in nursing, a profession that deals with the physical, emotional, and ethical complexities of heal- ing humans. You are infinitely smarter and more capable than a robot or software algorithm. Yet, that's exactly what the hospital industry is trying to do: Remove us registered nurses from the sides of our patients and try 12 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G J U LY | A U G U S T | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 3 N ot gonna lie. It's brutal at times being a regis- tered nurse. Our jobs were already hard before the pandemic. Our position is already an impossible one: We practice nursing and act as advocates for patients within a corporate health care industry that does not prioritize the healing and care of humans, but profits. We and our employers have opposing goals; always have and always will until we wake up and remove the profit motive from health care. Then when Covid hit, any pretense that our employers respected and valued us vanished completely. We tend to block traumatic memories, but many of us still recall how we had to fight for our one N95 per week (or month!), or to not be forced to rewear the "processed" N95s that reeked of chemicals. Or how they never fixed the negative pressure rooms or how they insisted on giving us mixed positive and negative patient assignments even though that was not safe for our patients, ourselves, nor our families. Or how they couldn't even keep the Sani wipes stocked. While we all tolerate less-than-ideal conditions during times of emergency, our employers perversely exploited the pandemic to accustom us and our patients to accept crisis standards of care as the new normal. Staffing on our floors is worse than ever. Pile on all the other injustices and indignities they throw at us—just-in-time everything, workplace violence, closures of critical units, and always cuts, cuts, cuts—it's oppressive. Many of us are leaving direct-care nursing, or contemplating it, because we just can't take it—not the risk, the stress, the moral injury that comes from knowing we're not doing right by our profession and our patients. Three Affirmations for today's Union Nurse Things all nurses should and must hear to stay true to themselves and the profession. BY MICHELLE MORRIS