Nursing: what nurses and physicians say, in their own words

Last updated September 20, 2026.

Read together, the 525 essays and podcast transcripts on this page are two professions writing about the same wards from different heights. Nurses describe thirteen-hour shifts without a break, six or seven patients where the standard is four, being hit by patients and told it is part of the job, and being blamed for errors the system produced. Physicians describe nurses as the people who monitor the doctors, whom patients remember after they have forgotten the physician, and whom they are told to thank and often do not. The two disagree about who is in charge, about first names, and about what a nurse is. They agree, across twenty years, that staffing is the problem: mentions of staffing or ratios rose from 1 percent of posts before 2010 to 32 percent since 2023, burnout from 1 to 42 percent, and the shortage from 6 to 29 percent. Nurses on this site have been saying since 2016 that the fix is a ratio written into law.

This page is a maintained record of what nurses and physicians have written about nursing on KevinMD.com, a physician-authored publication founded in 2004 by Kevin Pho, MD, a board-certified internal medicine physician in Nashua, New Hampshire, that has published nurses alongside physicians for its whole existence. It draws on 525 essays and podcast transcripts with nurse, nursing, RN, bedside, or staffing in the title, published between May 2005 and September 2026 by 258 named contributors. It is the only record on the site in which most of the voices are not physicians: 178 of the posts are bylined by nurses, 143 by physicians, and 13 by anonymous authors, most of them nurses. Every claim on this page is attributed to a named author with the date it was published and a link to the original.

The sections below are organized around the questions nurses, physicians, hospital leaders, and journalists ask. Each opens with a direct answer, followed by what named authors have said, in the order they said it. Nurse and physician authors are cited at the same weight and identified by credential. Nurse practitioner independence is a separate question with its own record on the scope of practice page. This is a page about opinion and experience, not workforce or labor guidance.

What do nurses say a shift is like?

Nurses on KevinMD describe the bedside in physical terms: thirteen hours on their feet without a break, eight hours without a bathroom, patients who hit and spit and are called just another patient, and the arithmetic of six or seven patients when the standard is four. They describe it as the hardest job and the best one, often in the same essay, and the essays since 2020 end more often with leaving. Posts mentioning patient death or dying peaked at 41 percent in 2015 to 2019.

Sarah Beth Cowherd, RN, wrote in December 2011 that “Over the first four hours of our shift, while we are running around attempting to maintain sanity,” nurses may not get to review details for individual patients, in “Conflict between physician and nurse.” Rachel Basham, RN, CCRN, wrote in April 2019 of walking “those long halls for those 13+ hour shifts without breaks with a huge pregnant belly and puffy feet,” in “Being a nurse: the hardest and the best job of all.” Samantha Hammond, RN, wrote in April 2020 that “I haven’t used the bathroom in more than eight hours, and I still have a pile of work to do,” before the end of her shift, in “The struggle of being a nurse is real.”

An anonymous nurse wrote in October 2022 of taking “5 to 7 patients almost once a week since being a nurse,” and of “crying in my car still in the parking lot,” but going back because she was finally a nurse, in “All I ever wanted to be was a nurse.” Lauren Powers, RN, CCRN, wrote in April 2023 that “The pep in my step became dragging my feet as I walked through the hospital entrance,” wondering whether she would have the resources to care for her patients, in “Breaking up with nursing: a heartfelt letter.” Debbie Moore-Black, RN, the most frequent contributor on the topic, wrote in January 2025 of her last shift after more than 40 years in the ER and ICU, on a unit whose patients “were the very sick: psychotics, schizophrenics, and prisoners,” in “The untold story of a nurse’s final shift after 47 years of service,” and in September 2026 of getting an ICU physician to approve removing a shackled patient’s restraints, “saving the patient from further blistering to his ankles,” in “Nurse advocacy: The shackles came off before he died.”

What do nurses say about staffing, ratios, and the shortage?

Staffing is the subject nurses on KevinMD return to most, and their position has not changed since the first nurses’ march on Washington in 2016: patient outcomes and nurse retention both improve when the number of patients per nurse is limited, California is the only state that mandates it, and the shortage is a retention problem before it is a supply problem. Staffing or ratios rose from 1 percent of posts before 2010 to 32 percent since 2023; the shortage from 6 to 29 percent; travel nursing entered the record in 2015.

Kevin Pho, MD, noted in November 2009 that institutions were moving nurses from eight-hour days to twelve-hour days while patient acuity rose, in a short commentary counted here but not indexed or linked. Rebecca Love, RN, wrote in May 2016 that on May 12, 2016, nurses “convened on our nation’s capital for the first time in 20 years to call for safe staffing,” organized by grassroots groups rather than unions, in “Nurses take DC to save patient lives.” Susan Shannon, RN, wrote on March 15, 2020, that “There are not enough nurses to care for a worsening coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.” and that hospitals planned to count on nurses to work extra, in “There are not enough nurses to care for the coronavirus pandemic.”

Suneel Dhand, MD, wrote in October 2018 that nurses pushing for ratios reason that “health care organizations have not come forward with any realistic alternative to help them care for patients safely,” in “Should there be mandatory state enforced nurse-to-patient ratios?” Linda Silas, RN, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, wrote in March 2021 that “A major investment in the retention and recruitment of nurses is needed now,” or an exodus from the profession is likely, in “A year into the pandemic, nurses are exhausted and angry.” Rayna M. Letourneau, PhD, RN, wrote in December 2021 that of the causes of the nursing shortage, “chief among them is the shortage of faculty to train future nurses,” in “The U.S. doesn’t have enough faculty to train the next generation of nurses.” Brendan Fasick, RN, and Abby Ehrhardt, RN, wrote in September 2025 that “When hospitals meet safe nurse-to-patient ratios, outcomes improve and nurses stay longer at the bedside,” in “Why we need national nurse-to-patient ratios.” Rennae Revell, RN, wrote in June 2026 that “experienced nurses are the backbone of safe, high-quality patient care,” and that their pay is leadership rather than a liability, in “Experienced nurse pay is leadership, not a liability.” Marc Henry Estriplet, MD, MPH, wrote in March 2026 that “the largest nursing strike in the city’s history has broken my heart,” and that the nurses “believe in nurses advocating for themselves, just as they would advocate for their patients,” in “Health care affordability crisis: lessons from the NYC nursing strike.”

What do nurses and physicians say about each other?

The nurse-physician relationship is in most of the record: physicians appear in 58 to 89 percent of posts since 2010. Physicians on KevinMD write about nurses in two registers, tribute and instruction: thank them, learn from them, do not disrespect them. Nurses write about physicians in a third: the conflict on the floor, the rift between the professions, and the master-servant history both sides still carry. The first-name question, whether nurses and physicians should be addressed the same way, has been debated on the site since 2010. Respect or disrespect appears in about a third of posts since 2010.

Christopher Johnson, MD, who worked as an orderly, aide, and practical nurse before medical school, wrote in September 2010 that nurses’ relationship to physicians “for many decades was more or less a master-servant one,” and asked whether physicians should also go by first names, in “Nurses expect to be called by their first names, should doctors follow?” Sarah Beth Cowherd, RN, asked in December 2011, “When it comes to doctor- nurse interactions, when is enough, enough?” in “Conflict between physician and nurse.” Alana Rose, RN, wrote in December 2012 of a mobile clinic where “the nurse was outside with the patients all day; few saw the doctor,” in “The deep professional rift between nursing and medicine.” Brian J. Secemsky, MD, wrote in December 2012 that “a lot of physicians forget that, like doctors, nurses care for multiple patients at a time,” in “Doctors: How to improve your workplace relationship with nurses.”

Shirie Leng, MD, an anesthesiologist and former nurse, wrote in April 2013 that the question “What is a doctor? What is a nurse?” would have been absurd thirty years ago, and that the dress of nurses and doctors today is “emblematic of the blurring of the lines,” in “The only thing that truly separates doctors from nurses.” Maria Yang, MD, wrote in January 2014 that “nurses provide around-the-clock monitoring of doctors in hospitals,” and know “which doctors work in collaboration with nurses and which ones treat them like second-class citizens,” in “Doctors and patients: Always thank your nurses.” Suneel Dhand, MD, wrote in March 2015 that patients “may forget who their doctor is, but they will rarely forget their nurse,” and that disrespect of nurses by doctors “frequently happens on a daily basis up and down the country,” in “Nurses are the superheroes of health care.” Edwin Leap, MD, wrote in August 2018, in a list of tips for new residents, that the first is that nurses are always right, in “Nurses are always right. And 28 other tips for new residents,” and in March 2015 that “EMR is so inefficient, and patient volumes and acuity so high, that charting isn’t done real-time,” in “Pay doctors and nurses for the time they spend charting.”

Nurses also write about each other. Debbie Moore-Black, RN, wrote in August 2016 of a timid new nurse driven out by lateral violence on her unit while “The administration did not blink an eye,” in “We are nurses: Stop the bullying in health care.” Amanda Dean, RN, wrote in December 2024 that the saying nurses eat their young has “another word for this behavior: bullying,” and asked why the cycle had outlived white uniforms and paper charting, in “Nurses, stop eating your young: a call for change,” and in August 2026 that nurses who disagreed with her aggressively “may have been experiencing a very real but not often discussed by-product of care: moral distress,” in “Moral distress is the wound behind bedside care.”

What do nurses say about being blamed?

Two cases anchor the record. In 2009 two Texas nurses faced criminal charges for reporting a physician to the state medical board. In 2022 RaDonda Vaught, a Vanderbilt nurse, was convicted of negligent homicide for a medication error, and nurses on KevinMD wrote that her conviction would teach every nurse to hide the next one. Between them are the essays about nurses reported, fired, and disciplined for errors the system produced.

Kevin Pho, MD, noted in October 2009 that two whistle-blowing nurses were prosecuted after reporting a physician to the Texas Medical Board, and that nurses are reluctant enough as it is to report a bad doctor; the post is a 2009 commentary, counted here but not indexed or linked. Beth Anne Algie, RN, a critical care nurse, wrote in February 2020 that “I am a critical care RN, and I violated my patients’ rights,” every day for decades, by not letting intubated patients participate in their plan of care, in “As a registered nurse, I do not want to violate my patients’ rights anymore.” Barbara L. Olson, RN, wrote in May 2022 a letter to the judge sentencing Vaught, arguing that “Nor will her incarceration advance the safety of patients in Tennessee or elsewhere,” and that if nurses “rightly fear punishment for cognitive slips and lapses,” the chasm between work as imagined and work as done cannot be closed, in “Why a nurse should not go to jail.”

What do nurses say about violence at work?

Nurses on KevinMD describe being struck, threatened, and spat on as routine, and describe hospitals that respond with a plastic whistle. Physicians writing since 2025 place it in a wider pattern of violence against health care workers that is driving both professions out. Posts mentioning violence or assault have held near a fifth of the record since 2010 and reached 22 percent since 2023.

Debbie Moore-Black, RN, wrote in August 2017 of an ED nurse’s assault, and that the Emergency Nurses Association “reported that 80 percent of ED nurses and health care personnel were physically/verbally attacked in the ED 2014-2016,” in “A nurse was attacked in the emergency department. This is her story.” Joan Spitrey, RN, wrote in September 2017 of the arrest of nurse Alex Wubbels for refusing to draw blood from an unconscious patient without a warrant, that “Not only did she keep him safe, but also she put his interests above her own,” in “Here’s how the unjust arrest of one nurse inspires all nurses.” Debbie Moore-Black, RN, wrote in March 2023 that when she cleaned out her nurse’s bag after retirement she found, alongside the stethoscope, “tourniquets for IVs, and a plastic whistle,” the safety measure her health system had issued her, in “Nurse’s whistle of hopelessness: a tale of a dangerous workplace with no safety measures.” Harry Severance, MD, wrote in March 2025 that consumer “distrust, hostility, and aggression toward the whole health care system” was driving workers out, and that “the only real way to stop the increasing violence is to repair the system,” in “Violence in health care: Why doctors and nurses are leaving.”

What do nurses say about burnout and leaving?

Burnout appears in 1 percent of nursing posts before 2015, 14 to 16 percent from 2015 to 2022, and 42 percent since 2023. Posts mentioning leaving rose from 1 percent to 34 percent. Nurses on KevinMD say what physicians on the burnout record say, that the answer offered is self-care and the cause is the system, and they say it about a profession where the replacements are trained by a faculty that does not exist.

Claire Hebner, MD, wrote in November 2019 that “Burnout rates among medical providers have increased dramatically as professional fulfillment has decreased,” and that empowering nurses is part of the answer, in “To fight physician burnout, empower nurses.” Kashica J. Webber-Ritchey, PhD, RN, wrote in February 2023 that her team’s study of Black nurses during the pandemic found the first step is “to truly listen to Black nurses and learn from their experiences,” in “Nursing for change: Prioritizing Black nurses’ health and well-being.” Andrea Coyle, DNP, wrote in April 2024 that “Burnout is common among all nursing professionals, but research has shown that symptoms can vary based on age or gender,” in “Nurse burnout: causes, symptoms, and solutions by gender and generation.” An anonymous nurse wrote in April 2026 that “Burnout is not caused by nurses failing to meditate enough or eat healthy meals between shifts,” and that “the conversation must shift away from individual coping strategies and toward systemic accountability,” in “Why self-care alone cannot cure systemic nursing burnout.”

How has the nursing conversation changed since 2005?

The record begins with Kevin Pho tracking the nursing shortage, whistleblower cases, and the shift from eight-hour to twelve-hour days. From 2010 to 2014 the relationship between the professions was the subject, argued from both sides. From 2015 to 2019 the nurses arrived in numbers, Moore-Black, Basham, Love, and the staffing march. 2020 to 2022 was the pandemic and Vaught. Since 2023 the record is burnout, ratios, strikes, violence, and, in 36 percent of posts, AI and technology on the unit. 2026 is the peak year at 54 posts through September.

Term 2005 to 2009 (81 posts) 2010 to 2014 (91 posts) 2015 to 2019 (131 posts) 2020 to 2022 (83 posts) 2023 to 2026 (139 posts)
Staffing or ratios 1 percent 3 percent 21 percent 22 percent 32 percent
Shortage 6 percent 9 percent 10 percent 18 percent 29 percent
Travel or agency nursing 0 percent 0 percent 3 percent 6 percent 4 percent
Leaving or quitting 1 percent 19 percent 21 percent 28 percent 34 percent
Burnout 1 percent 1 percent 14 percent 16 percent 42 percent
Physicians (the relationship) 42 percent 89 percent 75 percent 58 percent 71 percent
Respect or disrespect 4 percent 29 percent 35 percent 28 percent 26 percent
Union or strike 1 percent 3 percent 6 percent 1 percent 8 percent
Medication error or Vaught 1 percent 0 percent 2 percent 7 percent 4 percent
ICU 0 percent 10 percent 24 percent 31 percent 32 percent
Patient death or dying 4 percent 16 percent 41 percent 40 percent 27 percent
Nursing education or BSN 6 percent 14 percent 16 percent 12 percent 22 percent
Violence at work 1 percent 19 percent 19 percent 18 percent 22 percent
AI or technology 4 percent 23 percent 15 percent 14 percent 36 percent

Term frequencies are the share of posts in each period using the term at least once, computed on the September 18, 2026 corpus of 525 posts.

The 2009 posts are Kevin Pho’s: the Texas nurses, older nurses forced out by twelve-hour shifts, and whether nurses would solve the primary care crisis. Johnson’s first-names essay in 2010, Cowherd in 2011, Rose and Secemsky in 2012, and Leng in 2013 are the relationship years. Yang and Dhand in 2014 and 2015 are the physicians’ tributes. Love’s march in 2016 and Basham in 2019 open the nurses’ own record. Shannon on March 15, 2020, Algie the month before, Silas a year in, and Olson on Vaught in 2022 are the pandemic years. Since 2023 the record is Powers leaving, Moore-Black retiring and then getting a patient’s shackles removed, Fasick and Ehrhardt on ratios, the anonymous nurse on self-care, Dean on moral distress, Severance on violence, Revell on experienced nurse pay, and Estriplet on the strike.

The KevinMD nursing corpus by the numbers

The figures below describe the set of KevinMD posts this page draws on, as of September 18, 2026. They are counts of what KevinMD has published, not workforce data.

Measure Value
Posts in the corpus 525
Date range May 25, 2005 to September 18, 2026
Named contributors 258
Posts bylined by a nurse 178
Posts bylined by an MD or DO 143
Anonymous posts 13
Short posts by Kevin Pho, 2005 to 2011 95, median 82 words
Podcast episodes with full transcripts 25
Posts in the corpus that are not indexed, counted but not cited 105
Total words About 370,000
Peak year 2026, 54 posts through September 18
Most frequent contributors Debbie Moore-Black, RN (49); Suneel Dhand, MD (7); Sarah Beth Cowherd, RN (6); Shirie Leng, MD (6); Edwin Leap, MD (5)

How this page was built and how it is updated

The corpus was assembled from title searches for nurse, nurses, nursing, RN, bedside, staffing, charge nurse, travel nurse, ratio, RaDonda Vaught, scrubs, and CNA, keeping posts about nursing as a profession, removing posts about nursing homes, breastfeeding, midwifery, and other uses of the words, and routing posts about nurse practitioner independence to the scope of practice record. Term frequencies were computed against the full text of each post on the corpus assembled for the September 18, 2026 build; this page was converted to the current standard on September 20, 2026 without rebuilding that corpus, so the counts and figures are as of September 18, 2026. Posts are counted whether or not they are indexed; citations on this page are limited to posts that are indexed and can be verified at the link. One hundred five posts in the corpus are not indexed: Kevin Pho’s 2005 to 2011 commentaries, nine podcast episodes without transcripts, and a number of short essays. They are counted but not cited. Quotations are taken verbatim from the original posts. Author credentials are as they appeared in the byline at publication; nurse and physician authors are cited at the same weight. Debbie Moore-Black, RN, the most frequent contributor, is cited at the same rate as other frequent voices rather than in proportion to her output. Kevin Pho’s posts from 2005 to 2011 were short commentaries on news and are counted separately above. Every source is linked in the sentence that cites it, and the full list appears at the end of the page. The complete feed is at the Nursing archive. Related records: Scope of practice: what physicians, nurse practitioners, and PAs say, in their own words, Medical errors: what physicians say, in their own words, COVID-19: what physicians wrote as it happened, and Physician burnout: what physicians say, in their own words.

This page is updated as new essays about nursing are published on KevinMD. When it is updated, the date at the top changes, the counts in the tables are recomputed, and new named claims are added to the relevant section. Nothing is removed unless the original post is removed. An author who believes a quotation on this page misrepresents them can write to Kevin Pho and the page will be corrected.

To cite this page: Pho K. Nursing: what nurses and physicians say, in their own words. KevinMD.com. Updated September 20, 2026. https://kevinmd.com/nursing

The 36 KevinMD posts cited on this page, in order of publication