I have been a nurse for over 20 years and have seen the profession I love be destroyed by the health insurance industry.  Not to mention the people in management that have no clue what we do every day and only care about money.  Most nurses decide to become a nurse because they truly care and want to make a difference. 

Going thru nursing school is hard and many don’t even make it thru.  You have to want it to survive until graduation.  Then you have to go back thru everything you learned to hopefully pass the national exam.  You get a job that probably wasn’t in the area you dreamed of working while you were in school.   But you have to start somewhere.   Orientation is a joke because the profession does not have enough nurses.  So you jump in to either sink or swim.  Nurses go home after working a 12 hour shift and lay awake.  Replaying everything we did in that 12 hours wondering if we forgot to do anything.  They hope that they didn’t make a mistake.  All they wanted to do was make just a little difference in someone’s life that day.  They rarely get to eat or even go to the bathroom for those 12 hours.  Most work the weekends and holiday’s while their loved ones celebrate without them.  You sit in your car before walking into your job.  You wonder if you really made the right decision to become a nurse.  But you go in with a migraine because people need you.

What RaDonda Vaught did....happens every day and in every healthcare facility unfortunately.  Not because a nurse wants to make a mistake or hurt anyone...but because they are stretched thin.  They are trying to train the new nurses, they are trying to learn a new computer system that still has tons of issues, they have physicians yelling at them for calling them to clarify an order, they are answering call lights to get yelled at by neglected patients who want a cup of water, they even get hit and kicked by patients and so much more.  They don’t want to neglect the patients but can only do so much and are drowning. 

The patients deserve better and so do all of those who work in healthcare.  RaDonda Vaught and all healthcare workers do NOT deserve jail time for a tragic mistake but we do deserve a better work environment. So I beg you to please help us caring nurses find our passion again by fixing the healthcare disaster.  Please do not make us have to add possible jail time to things we have to worry about.  On top of everything else that keeps us from sleeping.