We are Bleeding Nurses
May 6-12 is National Nurses week every year. It ends each year on Florence Nightingale’s birthday.
May 6-12 is National Nurses week every year. It ends each year on Florence Nightingale’s birthday.
The Wednesday of this National Nurses week is School Nurse Day 2026.
This poem was making the rounds on one of the School Nurse Facebook groups and is attributed to @dailyhumorfornurses.
There is death watch going on for nursing profession.
We are bleeding nurses – nurses are leaving, walking off of their jobs because of burnout, overwork, and feeling underpaid, huge responsibilities with minimal or absent support from higher up the chain.
There are so many reasons and combination of reasons for walking away.
The stress in this field is very high.
The rewards are few.
Walking away seems to be the only option to preserve ones sanity.
What is happening?
Nurses are realizing there are other jobs they can do.
They may or may not pay as well, but the hours are better, and the work/life balance is also better.
School nurses are not immune to the many reasons that their colleagues working in hospitals are experiencing.
The nurse in the school setting often works alone.
There are no other medical staff employed in the building.
The pressure to perform at a high level with no support is extreme.
Some school nurses are seeing 60 to 80 students a day with student body sizes of 700 or more students with no support, clinical or otherwise.
This is unsustainable.
This is about feeling unable to provide safe care.
Often school nurses face administrators that say, “you just need to prioritize better” when they have no idea what they are talking about.
You are the only one that can administer medications, legally (and no nurse will jeopardize her license by allowing someone else to take over if she is called to an “emergency”).
Staff will report they need support “immediately for an emergency,” for the nurse to discover the child got a papercut.
Yes, papercuts may be painful, but they are not emergencies.
Staff repeatedly send a child to the nurse’s office with the same symptoms the nurse already cleared the student to remain in school.
Staff sometimes take it upon themselves to call a parent to pick up a child… for allergy symptoms.
Children with seasonal or environmental allergies do not need to go home.
Learning to live with mild symptoms is a reality for most people.
School nurses report they are tired of being expected to carry all the unrealistic expectations of staff and administration.
Many school nurses never truly get a break. Lunch breaks? What are those?
Too often nurses are told they may not leave the school campus during their breaks—then they get called back for all types of requests during their break times.
Other nurses eat at their desk while they are multi-tasking.
Not only do we have hands-on clinical nursing to do, there is a load of required paperwork that must also be completed.
Every child that is seen? We need to write up what was seen, heard and done.
Evidence-based practice is the standard for care.
Health care plans and action plans must be completed on all children with a diagnosis that may impact learning / create an emergency for the student.
Even when using templates, it takes time to create each plan.
Every child that needs medication during the day needs paperwork completed after the med is given.
Every child that has been injured or suffered some type of medical incident, must have a report completed.
Every child that experiences some type of mental health crisis during the school day will usually be seen by the nurse first, before the counselor might be brought in.
The number of children with mental health concerns has skyrocketed since COVID.
Nursing is a profession in crisis.
There is a crisis in this country of nurses who are leaving their vocation, feeling burned out and disrespected.
We are tired.
Tired of trying to do it all and be all for others while selling ourselves short.
It is time to start taking care of our own health and well-being.
Have you thanked a nurse this week?
A human, not an AI text generator, wrote this essay.
I am not a doctor, neither do I play one on TV. This is an information only newsletter.
For specific medical advice please see your primary care provider.
If you like my work, please consider supporting me by subscribing, clicking on the little heart below, commenting, and/or restacking this essay.
You are such a strong advocate Nancy. The level of awareness needs to be raised significantly on the work that is delivered daily by caring professions. Restacking ❤️