I've been working on increasing my physical activity level after dealing with Long COVID for a year (any sort of activity, especially physical activity, triggers symptoms) and the accompanying deconditioning and wasting that came along with that. Fortunately it's summer, so I'm doing some gardening and yard work, walking the dog, doing easy hikes, neighborhood walks with my family, and my new favorite form of activity is activism. I've been outside standing holding flags and signs promoting inclusivity and denouncing hate for hours at a time and it usually involves dancing. I'm hoping to have some muscular arms here soon! The nurses who have been striking also know what I mean 😅

@Elina Solaita aka LE love this idea!

@Deborah Anderson

The only reason I'm not on strike along with these healthcare workers is because Providence closed my department, laid us all off, and outsourced much of the work mere weeks before our nurses' contract was due to expire. Now I'm priced out of my very specialized job market, but I could accept a job for $20 or more less per hour. Providence did nothing to retain the nurses with their years of experience in their system and I can only think of our expense as the reason why. I could also talk for hours about how Providence's treatment of it's "healthcare heros" has deteriorated over the nearly 15 years I worked for them, as could any of their employees. Or how my healthcare costs skyrocketed in that time, even though I was working for Providence and using their health insurance and health care system. What I'm most passionate about though, is how Providence has increasingly been failing me, my family, and the community as patients. I could have died because of failures on multiple levels within Providence's systems. My child's care was subpar, limited to the most basic and oldest modalities, and difficult to access. As a healthcare provider, I know how to work within these systems and advocate for the care needed, but despite my hours of reaching out weekly for help we were repeatedly let down. As a nurse I was not able to provide the care to my community members that they needed to live well. There was often no place for patients to get help except for the emergency room, even Providence's patients service by Home Health, Hospice, and other intensive programs that advertise 24/7 care. Patients I triaged with COVID had to wait days for provider evaluation, often missing the timeframe to start prescription treatments that effectively prevented severe disease and death. Any local crisis sort of situations were met with closures of outpatient care facilities, the system quickly became overwhelmed, and patients were forced to delay or forgo their care or seek care in emergency rooms.

@Elina Solaita aka LE & @Deborah Anderson I think these sorts of things we do for our local and professional communities are just as important as the nursing care we're employed to provide!

Hi! 👋 Thanks for the warm welcome, Elina. I can't wait to see what we can do in this community!