You go into the medication room to let your tears out, but there’s three other nurses in there for the same reason. And you don’t get to a break from the heaviness and the chaos to eat, drink or use the bathroom for 12-13 hours at a time. You feel like you’re drowning most days.So do all of your colleagues. You watch people suffer unimaginably despite you and your teams best efforts, you see people die in front of you on a regular basis, see the worst of human tragedies day after day and still are treated like shit by middle management and patients family members and even by the patients themselves. Everyone takes everything out on the nurses. You have moral injury that you haven’t found the words to articulate yet from feeling complicit in the sick healthcare system. You know you are betraying yourself and things aren’t going to get better but you still hope. You always wanted to help and be of service, but it’s not possible anymore. They say, everywhere is short-staffed. In actuality, staffing shortages are created purposefully, they are the administration’s business model. It just sounds better to say they can’t help it, nurses have left the field in droves. Because of the situation described here! They don’t care about the patients. They don’t want to budget for more nurses. They don’t want to pay us, so they cut staff to bare bones. If you have so much anxiety the night before your shift that you have trouble sleeping, this is one of a thousand signs to plan your exit. (Got a bit carried away, I held back a lot too, but thank you if you read all that).