The Hear Us Out Campaign - Emerging Nurse Leader

Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

The American Association of Critical Care Nurses just launched a Hear Us Out Campaign to inform the public about the perspective of nurses and urge the unvaccinated to reconsider. The point is to let the public know that a hospital without nurses can’t save your life.

I applaud this effort. Too many healthcare leaders today are keeping their game faces on and concealing from their communities mounting concerns about the turmoil this crisis has had on nursing and other health professions. Our healthcare delivery system is in trouble, and many leaders now are not optimistic about the future. It is like watching a train crash in slow motion.

As an outcome of our collective failure to speak out, many in our communities have no idea about the actual costs of the COVID crisis. They don’t understand the ramifications of how personal decisions by others about vaccination may ultimately impact their health both in the short-term and the long-term. The widespread assumption is that only patients who develop COVID are paying the price. The truth is that we are all paying the price and will for years to come with a decline in life expectancy and possibly a lack of availability of essential healthcare services.

Before launching this campaign, AACN collected the following data in August 2021 from a sample of more than 6000 of its members:

92% of nurses surveyed said they believe the pandemic has depleted nurses at their hospitals and, as a result, their careers will be shorter than they intended.
66% feel their experiences during the pandemic have caused them to consider leaving nursing.
76% say that people who have yet to be vaccinated threaten nurses’ physical and mental well-being.
67% believe taking care of patients with COVID-19 puts their own families’ health at risk.

This data is concerning but no surprise to frontline healthcare leaders who see the outcomes of the past 18 months on the faces of staff every day. In a recent AONL study, 85% of nurse leaders anticipate that staffing shortages will continue long after the pandemic ends. Nurses are reducing their hours, retiring early and some have already left the profession.

In a recent interview with health leaders media, AACN President Beth Wathen noted that “If the health system falters because we don’t have enough nurses to care for patients, lives will continue to be lost long after this pandemic and that’s the message we want the public to understand.” She is right – now is the time to be brutally honest about what is happening here.

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