i've learned more about the real on-the-ground ugliness of COVID from r/nursing than I've learned from any other source. Even the most unflinching media portrayals of what COVID does to the unvaccinated and the people who have to care for them leaves a lot out.
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for example last week i learned that a lot of nurses have had to deal with maggots in the intubated bodies of COVID patients, because anybody who has to be intubated for as long as many COVID patients do makes an attractive home for fly larvae, even when they're still alive
I got called the t-slur by a patiient a couple months before covid hit and I haven't been able to get a job since because I told her to fuck off. People treat us like absolute shit and we just have to take it because "professionalism" is an industry-wide fetish by those in power. I had a terrible time before covid and from my understanding, literally every bad thing has just been turned up to 11 and I don't know how people are actually still going. We're overloading the healthcare system and also burning out fresh and veteran nurses so our healthcare system is going to be even worse going forward. Who wants to deal with the trauma and PTSD when you can just go find a job working at some soulless corp for the same pay and only having to deal with an asshole manager that you already had to deal with as a nurse.