Pulsara Blog

To celebrate the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, the World Health Organization (WHO) proclaimed 2020 as the Year of the Nurse and Midwife. 

And what a year it's been. This year, the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe. Nurses everywhere have spent 2020 working through exhaustion, the daily risk of being exposed to the virus, and the stress of risking their family's safety as well as their own. According to a new study conducted in the UK, nurses are experiencing high levels of burnout and depression, and 28% of NHS nurses are quitting within three years—a 50% increase since 2013.

Near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, I found myself in a conversation with a friend. We shared our concerns about the days ahead, talking about how we were going to handle the kids learning from home and discussing whether she was putting her family at risk by continuing to practice clinically.