| UNFAIR PARK | CODE BLUES Rob Dobi Pandemic burnout and a rising tide of violence from patients are driving nurses from their profession. BY DARBY MURNANE L ate one Saturday in the fall of 2020, an elderly man hospitalized with COVID-19 asked nurse Michael Bulger for a shave. He was too weak to do it himself, and the few days’ worth of stubble had grown itchy beneath his oxygen mask. With more and more new patients who’d contracted the coronavirus, Bulger’s floor at the Plano hospital where he works had filled to capacity. Still, he told the man he’d try to shave him but couldn’t make any promises. “Well, I’m going to meet my maker tomor- row morning,” the man said. “I want to look good when I get there.” So, Bulger got a razor and gave his pa- tient the best barber shop-style shave he could around his layers of personal protec- tive gear. By dawn, the man’s blood oxygen level had plummeted to around 70%, but he pulled his oxygen mask off. He didn’t want it anymore. He only wanted Bulger to stay by his side until the end. An hour and a half later, he died. “After a while, it became kind of a daily thing,” Bulger said. “You come in and wonder which ones aren’t going to be there when you leave tomorrow morning.” He estimates he’s performed CPR more times in the past two years than he had dur- ing his previous 11 years as a registered nurse. Throughout a typical five-night span, he would perform CPR at least six times and could almost guarantee that by that point the patient would not revive. It’s a physically and emotionally taxing process, using his whole body to pump someone’s heart for them, often punctuated by the sound of ribs cracking beneath the force of chest com- pressions. He was working from 60 to 75 hours per week. The hospital offered a $40 per hour bonus on top of overtime pay to incentivize nurses to pick up extra shifts amid the ceaseless tide of patients flowing through the doors. Many of Bulger’s fellow nurses declined because they had “nothing left,” he said. Memories like this are not distant for nurses like Bulger. President Joe Biden may have declared the pandemic over, but Texas is still seeing upward of 1,075 new con- firmed cases a day, with a daily average hos- pitalization rate of 283 patients for Dallas County as of Oct. 2. More troublesome still, nurses are as- saulted on all fronts these days, both literally and figuratively. They’re burned out and suffering deep psychological scars from the pandemic. This has sparked a mass exodus of workers from the field, foisting more work on those who remain. Violence against nurses has also radically increased in the last few years, in part thanks to the pan- demic, and nurses say minimal workplace protections leave them to face the danger alone. lll Psychiatric nurse practitioner Sandra Risoldi knows the risks well. Years ago, she was having trouble with a disturbed patient whom she could not calm down. Risoldi asked her supervisor to step in and take over, but the supervisor refused. When Ri- soldi tried to go back into the room, the pa- tient kicked the door at her, which she had used as a shield to block him back into the room. “He probably would’ve smashed my head to pieces on the ground,” Risoldi said. “He was jumping over things to try to get out.” >> p4 1 3 dallasobserver.comdallasobserver.com | CONTENTS | UNFAIR PARK | SCHUTZE | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | MOVIES | DISH | MUSIC | CLASSIFIED | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER MON O XX–M 20-26, X 2022X, 014 THCTOBERONTH
