In California, the state has passed legislature to mandate how many staff members need to be on-site per patient, in certain kinds of healthcare related facilities.

Well I dunno about you, but really knowing the importance of this was sort of lost on me, until my loved one was sentenced to Kaiser Permanente in Richmond for nearly two weeks.

Last year my significant other had a surprise GIST (gastrointestinal stromal tumor) removed, and he spent twelve days in the hospital. He literally described his time there as being stuck, being sentenced, like prison. It was during the height of COVID, and so in order to visit, I had to sneak in, looking like I worked there.

Your health is your freedom and we can’t take it for granted. But we do everyday.

If your workplace is understaffing the job, that takes a toll on you, your health. Your mental stability, your acuity, your fatigue level. It’s criminal, and it ought to be.

I have a friend who worked as a respected Nurse Practitioner for twenty-some years in Texas. Yet her esteemed career was ended in a day, by a patient, who brutally attacked her. There was only one fellow Nurse on the ward with my friend that day, (2 nurses for x# of patients?) and that Nurse literally ran the other way when she saw her co-worker being attacked. Security took a long time, but even one minute would have been too long to respond. My friend suffered a traumatic brain injury, among many other injustices (surgeries, doctors, meds, breakups, heartaches) that I haven’t even begun to understand. Seven and half years of her life have been changed by that one day on the job.

Staffing minimums are a topic she is passionate about advocating for, like legislatively, but she admits to me, she doesn’t really have the wherewithal each and every day, to fight the good fight. She now has to spend more time and energy on her health, and her well-being, which, her employer completely soiled and spoiled. And which she’ll never take for granted.