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
Holy shit, I’m reading /r/nursing right now and… just… how are people so fucking shitty to nurses who are actively trying to save their lives? This is a diseased society in every sense of the word.
When the only type of Class-consciousness that is allowed is that of a consumer, and Healthcare is explicitly referred to as a service you’re purchasing like any other, people will demand the same level of obedience and kow-towing as they do of a McDonalds worker. Couple that with the highly emotional events that puts most people into contact with nurses, and you get an atmosphere that is not going to be nice. Then you add the fact that nurses are seen as lesser than doctors, and that nurses have the most direct contact with patients, and shit gets really fucking bad.
I have some family in the States, and its fucking wild hearing some of their stories about working in a hospital. My family-member works in a hospital in Tennessee and she is genuinely struggling to get her children and husband to take Covid seriously at all. Since the husband is a Chud, he is completely beyond reach, even by his own wife.
The power of ideology is truly breathtaking. I saw a poster on patriots.win who was convinced his own son was a “crisis actor” after there was a shooting at the son’s school
Oh yeah. That was one of the parkland kids if I’m not mistaken. Absolutely breathtaking the level of brainwashing that right wing media has managed over the past 30-40 years.
how are people so fucking shitty to nurses who are actively trying to save their lives?
As someone who has been in the hospital for various things once or twice, you’re typically in a lot of pain and other forms of discomfort. I recently threw my back out, and was functionally bedridden for a few days. Shouting “please will someone bring me my piss bottle so I don’t wet the bed I am begging you!” at the top of my lungs was not my proudest moment or my most diplomatic.
That, plus the anxiety/terror associated with not understanding what is wrong, leads to people being very ill-tempered.
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.
