Reply To: Well stated and provocative. See this video

[Joseline]

This video is eye-opening for nurses not working at the bedside. It should be even more eye-opening for people not related to healthcare. Knowing that nurses feel overworked and many of them were already overworked prior to the pandemic should mean a lot to our society. To trained nurses at the bedside, especially in critical care takes time. The video is full of thoughtful ideas about how the healthcare system can continue to provide care, ensuring that every patient gets a trained nurse capable of providing the care the patients need and ensuring that nurses do not feel overwhelmed or under stress while providing the appropriate care. Reinventing the workflow in hospitals can ease the burden on nurses. The approach of bringing nurses from other countries is not ethical because it worsens the nursing shortage in other countries. The principle of valuing nurses as one of the most valuable resources across the world should be a priority in all healthcare facilities and reflected in their mission, vision, principles, and daily workflow. Reinventing the workflow and having medical assistants record assessments, send labs, bring specimens to labs could improve the amount of time nurses spend at the bedside. This could decrease the burden of nurses, their burnout, and the daily stress of nurses. Thinking about nurses as assistants in the healthcare setting is wrong. Nurses are professionals who deserve to be at the center of care provided in hospitals. Patients spend more time with a nurse than any other healthcare provider in the hospital. By providing one medical assistant and changing the workflow in hospitals many lives can be saved as nurses can spend more time in providing clinical care.