INSIDE MY TURN: Why would health care providers lie?

The Press recently ran an opinion piece written by a man who implied health care providers are liars and cited critical care RN Emily Farness’ story about a nurse writing goodbye letters for a dying patient as evidence that the hospital is not really in crisis.

I speak firsthand, because I have helped our critical care team meet patient care needs through the team nursing model, both in December/January and again in August/September, with the need currently continuing. Many of my peers and I have worked extra hours outside our home department, week after week, to meet patient care needs. I’ve worked with a core critical care RN who was on his 10th consecutive 12-hour shift and still sitting at the edge of the bed, holding a patient’s hand, and treating that patient with dignity and compassion as they made end-of-life comfort care plans for the patient’s spouse as care was withdrawn.

I have also worked for years alongside the RN mentioned in the story and know that this RN lost his remaining parent this year. His personal loss made him more in tune with the importance of his patient getting to say their goodbyes. This team of nurses put in a great deal of effort to make time to help a patient say goodbye to loved ones. Do you know why? Because we (health care providers) are trying desperately to keep our empathy and our humanity during this overwhelming battle that feels like it’s never going to end. We’re tirelessly working to give our patients the best we can in suboptimal conditions.

Some of our COVID-19 patients are with us for weeks. Some get better, some pass away, some become widows or widowers while in our care and some are permanently disabled and will never return to the life they knew. Working in the ICU right now is gut-wrenching. Health care providers are experiencing trauma and grief, losing sleep and worrying about our own loved ones. Then we leave work and many of our community members call us names and discount our eye-witness testimony.

I ask you — why would health care providers lie? Misrepresenting the situation would not benefit us in any way. There’s no benefit to health care organizations canceling the thing that actually makes money — elective surgeries — in favor of housing critically ill patients for weeks at a time. Health care organizations everywhere are hemorrhaging money to pay for bigger oxygen tanks, more equipment, increased pay for travel nurses or overtime pay for core staff and copious amounts of personal protective equipment.

Health care providers have no reason to lie to you about what we are seeing. We are human beings who are doing our best in a horrible situation. Please don’t attack us or call us names for doing our best to show compassion to our suffering and dying patients.

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Shannon Kline, MSN, RN, is a nurse at Kootenai Health.