Photos:  Fox 21

By Cara Copp from Fox 21 News • August 20, 2022

Healthcare workers and community members took up signs to picket by the Lake View Hospital in Two Harbors to raise awareness of the challenges they face day to day.

It was not a strike, but an informational picket. This coming after the Two Harbor nurses, and the Minnesota Nurses Association Union say they started seeing an increase in issues like healthcare workers being overworked, and understaffed.

“For the last two and a half years we don’t so much call it burnout as more of moral injury, and the moral injury comes from our employers more and more try to make us take more patients, with less resources,” President of Minnesota Nurses Association, Mary Tuner, said.

These nurses say they are fighting for the resources and recognition they need to do their jobs correctly, especially coming out of the pandemic. They say they want the ability to care for their patients, and their community.

“We don’t get anything for it. This is all out of the goodness of our hearts. This is what we do for each other. This is what we do for our community, and it’s unappreciated by Lake View,” A nurse at Lake View Hospital, Bambi Dechantal, said.

The Union say that on top of the struggles they continue to face, hospitals continue to see a drop in young nurses staying in the healthcare field due to the high stress work environment.

“They go work in the hospital for one maybe two years, and I’ve had these nurses literally crying on my shoulder. “Mary this isn’t what I’ve dreamed of when I was a little girl, or this isn’t what I thought it would be, and I can’t do this,” and they’re heart broken, and they’re disillusioned, and they’re crying on my shoulder,” said Mary

We reached out to the Lake View Hospital, and are waiting for a response.