Not mad or upset with you, but this is my first full day off after six nights straight and I've been, uh, imbibing since I woke up. Healthcare Heroes is the term our hospital administration refers to and publicizes us as to skirt our requests for better PPE, hazard pay, better communication, employee testing, et al. Why try to actually take care of your people? It's enough when you can virtue signal by having a sign up on a skywalk that says "Heroes Work Here" and give out a few shirts that say "Healthcare Hero" on them for nurse's week, rendering them unwearable in public. Heroes by definition can go without essential tools. It's part of what makes them heroic. Then the public sees this and wants to help (which is great!) So they send food to the hospital from local restaurants and help feed us, or lots of cards and candy (also great!). Admin sees all of this happening and then wonders what we have to complain about. I'm not a hero, and I don't know any nurse, APRN, or doctor who would refer to themselves as such. A lot of the time lately it feels like we're martyrs. I keep showing up because (a) helping other people is the only thing that gives me meaning in life; (b) I like getting a paycheck; and © I care too much about the amazing people I work with to let them shoulder this burden alone. We have lost over fifteen nurses just on my home unit since May. That is devastating to an ICU, and we're not even the COVID ICU (though who knows how much longer that will last). The majority of them left because of administrative inflexibility on helping us protect our loved ones from ourselves and their refusal to rehire or retain anyone who wanted to go help in the initial hotspots. The nursing administration at one of my hospitals stopped the weekly Q&A sessions they would have for staff shortly after COVID started in earnest because they didn't like the questions we asked and they didn't like the attitude with which we asked them. Nor have any administrators volunteered to help out on some shifts. These people all have active nursing licenses in the State of Texas . It is a requirement of their jobs. There is so much they could do to help, even without taking direct care of patients. But they don't. When the PPE situation was at its worst (and it's still not great. Better, but not great), we asked them if they would go into COVID room wearing the gear they were telling us was safe and protective enough to wear. I'll give you one guess as to how many took us up on that challenge. We are just another line item expense to them. Show me a nurse that goes into administration and I'll show you a fucking sellout.