TAMPA, Fla — Frontline workers labored relentlessly to fight COVID-19 in our hospitals. The latest data from the Department of Health and Human Services says 91 percent of Florida's ICU beds are in use, and nearly half are being used for COVID patients. That's well above the national average.
“Nurses are burned out. They’re emotionally exhausted,” said Rayna Letourneau, a registered nurse who now trains other nurses through the University of South Florida.
“We are seeing a lot of a lot of nurses are self-medicating, a lot of nurses are using substances to help themselves cope,” said Letourneau.
Overworked, underappreciated, and many on the verge of a breakdown. That's how Rayna Letourneau describes the feeling among nurses on the frontlines this Labor Day. It’s a feeling also driven by a staffing shortage straining those working to save lives.
"Nurses have higher depression rates, higher anxiety, we get less sleep than the average American...and the pandemic is really exacerbating these things,” she said. "We're really putting a strain on the hospital resources... we're running the risk that we don't have enough equipment to be able to adequately care and appropriately care for the patients to the level that they need."
Letourneau says it’s making nurses and healthcare workers make choices no one wants to make.
“If we do not change, we are forcing nurses who are working in those hospital settings to make really, really difficult decisions...the nurses have to decide which patient will be able to get their attention and their care because they cannot be in two places at once,” Letourneau says.