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Meet Morgan.
She works in Emergency at one of the city’s major hospitals.

Her role is intense. Her body runs on adrenaline. Her movement on instinct.

Morgan has been a nurse for fourteen years. Always in Emerg, where chaos and uncertainty are the norm. A place that once housed a tight team of colleagues turned friends, who relied on one another to triage every patient that arrived. Assess each situation.

Her employer tells her ER nurses are appreciated. But Morgan knows better. She sees the reality. Her colleagues are leaving at an alarming rate. The Emergency Room never closes. Its doors constantly open, one crisis after another. The patient in cardiac arrest, acute respiratory failure, stroke, overdose, the list goes on.

Oftentimes the waiting room is overcrowded. The caregivers are exhausted and overworked, the patients desperate, and the atmosphere nerve-wracking. The nurses are the ones who are often on the receiving end of the frustrations. It’s unpredictable. People act out, sometimes with violent actions. They shoulder the harassment; the criticism of a system not functioning optimally.

Morgan is burning out. She’s exhausted. She feels deflated, she too thinks about leaving the ER, and truthfully, the profession. But for now, she’s forced to work double shifts knowing her absence would be one more blow to anyone left standing in the ER.

Just thinking about the lack of support; the gravity of the situation, the never-ending line up of people needing help and no recruitment in sight makes her feel infuriated.

Knowing she doesn’t want her patients to know just how bad the situation is, she hides, behind the mask. But at what cost?

Innercourage.ca  |  2022