Since the 19th century, nurses have been around helping, healing, and saving people. They have a myriad of responsibilities. Short of writing prescriptions, they do just about everything involved with a person’s care. Nursing is often characterized as a glamorous, generous career, but it’s not.

Our society needs to start prioritizing the mental health of nurses. Nurses spend so much time and energy taking care of others, that they often don’t care for themselves. The lack of support for nurses’ mental health is detrimental to their well-being, as well as to their patients’.

Sara Sanders, Arvada West nurse, and former ER and Urgent Care nurse, says, “I feel like maybe one of the biggest issues is just enough resources for us to be able to take care of ourselves…it’s always been pretty much just, you take care of all of these other people, and hopefully you can figure out how to take care of yourself. So I do feel like that can cause a lot of burnout in people when we’re not really given the resources to help take care of ourselves.”

She goes on to say, “Some of the things we have to deal with are very traumatic. I’ve dealt with quite a number of kids or patients who’ve died on me. Those traumas just kind of add up. A lot of times we don’t know how to get the support that we need. I think a lot of people who are essential workers do have issues with their mental health.”

She is absolutely right. Despite all of the media attention paid to the nursing profession in 2020, nothing has changed for our nurses. That’s because nobody did anything to affect actual change. Thousands of Coloradans opened their doors at night and howled to show their support for our nurses, but no one addressed the real issues: understaffing, workload, and compensation. 

Sanders comments, “I don’t really feel like it’s changed very much. I mean maybe for that little tiny period of time where we were kind of considered like, ‘Oh! You guys are kind of important!’ but now I just feel like…Everyone kind of forgot…I don’t think people really realize what happens when hospitals are overloaded…a lot of people that are insensitive to that, they don’t see it, they don’t work in it, they don’t know what it’s like.”

Another issue is the unequal compensation provided to nurses. While they perform vital work, their pay and working conditions fall short of adequate compensation.

Sanders agrees with this, “I definitely feel like a bit more compensation is definitely warranted. I feel like with teachers, with nurses, people who you really can’t live without. I mean if you look at the NFL, you can live without the NFL. I mean it would be maybe sad, but you can live without it. You can’t live without teachers, you can’t live without healthcare workers. So I feel like a little bit more compensation would definitely be warranted.”

This is ridiculous. Actors, singers, and pro athletes are paid well and put on pedestals even though they aren’t necessary to society and their jobs are just frivolous entertainment. According to PayWizard, Russell Wilson, Bronco quarterback, makes $3,750,000 a year. Harry Styles, singer/songwriter, makes $15,600,110 a year. And Scarlett Johansson, a famous actress, makes $20,000,000 a year. Meanwhile, nurses and teachers, who really contribute to society by keeping people alive and educating the next generation, struggle to make ends meet.

She explains that most people devalue the problems faced by nurses and attribute them to media hype.

“They feel like maybe media is just kind of blowing things up, and it is tricky when you are working in the emergency room and you have patients that need to be admitted and there are no beds. They sit in the emergency room for hours upon hours and then that prevents other patients from being able to come in and get what they need. So, it’s tough.”

Nurses are some of the hardest-working and most underappreciated members of our society and considering all they do, they deserve to be compensated and treated with more respect. If we don’t show our appreciation for nurses now, who will? And if we lose nurses, what will happen when one day you go into the hospital and there isn’t anyone there to save your life?