COVID Didn’t Create the Nursing Crisis. It Gave Permission for Exploitation.

For over 30 years, I have been privileged to serve as a nurse. For 18 of those years, I worked in the NICU, where patient assignments are carefully considered because lives depend on safe staffing, sound judgment, and the ability to provide attentive, compassionate care.

Today, as a travel nurse, I have witnessed something deeply troubling. During my most recent eight-week travel assignment, I was assigned four babies on multiple occasions—more times than I had experienced during my previous 18 years as a NICU nurse combined.

That isn’t a badge of honor. It’s a symptom of a healthcare system that has normalized asking nurses to do the impossible.

COVID Changed More Than Healthcare

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed weaknesses in our healthcare system, but it also changed expectations of nurses. During the crisis, nurses stepped forward without hesitation. We worked longer hours, accepted higher patient loads, adapted to changing protocols, and carried unimaginable emotional burdens. Many of us believed these extraordinary demands would be temporary.

Instead, in too many settings, they became the new normal. Healthcare systems discovered they could continue asking nurses to do more with less.

And too often, they have.

Burnout Isn’t a Personal Failure

One of the greatest myths in healthcare is that burnout is an individual problem.

It’s not.

Burnout is often the predictable result of working in systems that continually stretch nurses beyond safe and sustainable limits. When nurses are expected to care for more patients than they believe is safe, they don’t simply become tired. They experience moral distress. They carry the weight of wondering whether they gave every patient what they deserved. No amount of meditation, yoga, or self-care can compensate for unsafe systems.

The Hidden Cost of Travel Nursing

As travel nurses, we leave behind our homes, families, routines, and support systems to fill critical staffing shortages across the country.

When our shift ends, recovery matters. Sleep matters. Feeling safe matters. Having a peaceful place to restore our nervous systems matters.

Yet many travel nurses find themselves paying premium housing costs for accommodations that fail to provide the basic conditions needed for rest and recovery.

In my experience, this reflects a broader issue: the needs of the clinicians providing care are often treated as secondary to the logistics and business of healthcare.

When housing is unsafe, noisy, poorly maintained, or not accurately represented, nurses begin each shift already depleted. If we truly value healthcare workers, we must also value the environments where they recover between shifts.

Nurse Coaching Is More Than Wellness

As a Board-Certified Nurse Coach, I don’t believe resilience means asking nurses to tolerate increasingly unhealthy environments. Resilience also means recognizing when systems are causing harm. It means helping nurses reconnect with their values, establish healthy boundaries, advocate for safe practice, and protect the compassion that brought them into nursing in the first place.

We cannot coach nurses into accepting chronic exploitation.

We can, however, help them reclaim their voice.

It’s Time to Care for the Caregivers

Healthcare depends on nurses. Patients depend on nurses. Communities depend on nurses.

Yet respect for nurses must extend beyond applause and appreciation weeks. It must show up in safe staffing, ethical leadership, restorative housing, psychological safety, and workplaces that recognize nurses as human beings—not simply resources to be stretched until they break.

My mission as a nurse coach is simple: Care for the Nurse. Change the Healthcare System. Because when nurses are healthy, supported, and empowered, everyone benefits.