Since she was six-years old, Wendy McNeil always knew she wanted to be a nurse to care and advocate for patients and ensure they receive the best care possible. However, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, she says working as a nurse has become impossible.

“It just felt like there was a constant loading of duties aside from what I already had as an assignment,” says the 40-year veteran RN. As a critical care nurse, McNeil was in charge of monitoring patients requiring high-risk medication and reviewing medication/lab orders. With the arrival of COVID-19, which exacerbated an already troubling situation in the nursing profession – understaffing of RNs – McNeil began caring for up to five patients a day. “Normally, a unit like (the one I worked on with 12 beds) would have five nurses and a charge nurse, but sometimes we were managing with four,” she says. In addition, because other hospital departments were short-staffed, McNeil would be in charge of answering phones, cleaning and setting up rooms, transporting patients to different parts of the hospital, and helping patients navigate and access the social supports available to them.