Burnt

I wrote this as a comment on a WA PO article on acute care nurses leaving the profession due to burn out.

It isn’t just acute care (hospital) nurses that are running on fumes. It’s all of us.  When covid patients are sent home to die, it’s hospice nurses that go into their homes to care for them. ( You try putting on full ppe  on the side of the road in a stiff breeze) In the same day we are also going in to the homes of cancer patients, skilled nursing facilities ( you would be amazed a year and a half in how many facilities still don’t have infection control). and  yes ,acute care hospitals.  It is hard enough to care for a 30 yr old  cancer patient with small children  dying before her time. It is exponentially harder to care for a thirty year old with small children dying because she was too stubborn to get a shot.
So many people are angry and verbally abusive now.  Guess who gets to absorb all that anger?  All the while the companies we work for are more interested in their profit margins than patient care-or staff safety.
Nurses have always been seen as disposable. We have always been subject to verbal abuse from patients, physicians and family members. This is at a completely different level now. It feels like we are in an abusive relationship that has evolved from verbal and emotional abuse to physical abuse with the  threat of death thrown in. 
Anti vaxers, no longer makes me angry. I  haven’t the mental energy to be angry. What scares me is I am losing the mental energy to care about much of anything. When people say nurses are done, It means we have been in that pot of boiling water for so long now we are  boiled dry and burnt to the bottom of the pan.