Nurse quits Saint John hospital to take up long-haul trucking
CBC
At 42, Leah Gorham has decided to trade in her stethoscope for life in the cab of an 18-wheeler because she saw no happy future for herself as a licensed practical nurse.
En route to Indiana then South Carolina, Gorham said she will miss the friends she made in New Brunswick health care and the thrill of helping people recover from operations, but she's feeling good about her decision to hit the road.
"This thing's really long," Gorham said of her truck as she passed through a raging snowstorm this week. "It's hard to turn, and it's heavy, but not only am I able to see the monetary value, I'm seeing the world."
Gorham worked in neurosurgery then general surgery over a 12-year span. She now works for a Dartmouth, N.S., transportation company and on Tuesday was hauling tires.
She said the Saint John Regional Hospital has always struggled with understaffing, but the pandemic made everything worse, and morale has taken a beating.
"A lot of the nurses are getting burned out. They're crying every day. They're crying in the bathroom. The people I know who are tough as nails, they just can't take it anymore."
Gorham said it's having an impact on employee safety.
Nurses have become so over-stretched, she said, it's hard to find the time or energy to talk to each other about anything beyond what is urgent and immediate.
She thinks this contributed to the worst patient assault of her career.
"We had so many patients apiece, we really couldn't communicate what was going on in the unit," said Gorham, describing what happened early one morning last August.
Gorham said a male patient whipped her in the face with his catheter bag, then pinned her up against the wall and tried to strangle her with his hands.
She said she later learned that he had shown signs overnight of becoming confused and aggressive, but nobody had had a chance to tell her that when she entered his room around six o'clock in the morning.
"We had so many patients apiece, we really couldn't communicate to each other about what was going on in the unit," she said.
"I mean, I've been assaulted in the hospital more than a few times, but this time it was an attack that I couldn't get away from and that's what scared me most."
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