Re: “One Day in the Parallel Universe of a London I.C.U.” NY Times Feb 2nd, 2022
Nurses in the U.S. and the U.K. are experiencing a “parallel universe” both inside overcrowded and understaffed hospital wards as well as underfunded and embattled public health systems. Both the American Hospital Association and the U.K. government have promulgated the fiction that regulated safe staffing levels are unnecessary and deny “flexibility” to nurses. At least in the U.K. there is the universal healthcare of the National Health Service that has saved proportionately more lives from the COVID 19 pandemic than the U.S. In my work as an advice nurse during the pandemic, I regularly hear desperately ill COVID 19 patients express reluctance to call 911 for fear of the ensuing bill. Nurses such as myself on both sides of the Atlantic are indeed becoming burned out, not by running out of compassion, but literally sick and tired of being sick and tired while their colleagues, families and patients continue to sicken and die.
Sasha Cuttler RN PhD
RN Chair of Service Employees International Union Local 1021
215 29th Street, San Francisco, CA 94131
mobile phone 1-415-307-3035
