It Is Time to Pay Critical Care Nurses What They Are Worth

I am a nursing professor and I have spent 18 years at the bedside in critical care nursing, including in a shock trauma platoon during the Iraq war. I am not exaggerating when I say that conditions at the bedside in today’s critical care units are analogous to a combat zone. After nearly 2 years of intense workplace stress, many nurses have stopped working in critical care.¹  The critical care nurse shortage is likely to get even worse: more than one-third (33.7%) of nurses plan to reduce their hours or leave the bedside altogether within the next year.² 

Hospital leaders are combatting shortages of critical care nurses by importing nurses from overseas,³  hiring traveling nurses, and, in one notable case, even attempting to use the legal system to force nurses and technicians to delay their departure for a higher paying job until their replacements could be trained....