State nurses are calling on the commonwealth to rebuild the public health system with better staffing and funding in order to address dire circumstances they say have heavily affected patient care, not only during the pandemic, but for decades prior.
Nurses with the Pennsylvania departments of Health, Corrections and Human Services came together Thursday to call attention to challenges that have made their occupations, and those of thousands of individuals throughout Pennsylvania, all that much more difficult, especially in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic.
Even before the coronavirus, continuous budget cuts across the commonwealth left the departments with staffing issues and poor recruitment and retention rates, resulting in a situation where nurses struggle to care for their patients, they said.