Already shorthanded, the nation’s nurses are fighting burnout along with another surge in coronavirus cases. A patient rests in a corridor waiting for a room at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana, Calif., on Jan. 3, 2021. With hospitals again running out of ICU bedspace, administrators are dealing with a shortage of nurses.

An intensive care nurse trained in infectious disease treatment, Alexander had spent some two months working marathon shifts in an ICU ward in the San Francisco Bay Area, just as the first tsunami of COVID-19 patients began. Though she had volunteered, she recalls, the scene was apocalyptic: beds, ventilators, protective gowns, facemasks and even mortuary space were all scarce, but the patients kept coming. And the end was nowhere in sight.

After yet another shift in the "meat grinder" that day, Alexander says, "I had a breakdown at work. I started crying, and I pretty much couldn't stop. And I basically didn't stop crying for, like, three or four weeks." Intense psychotherapy helped, but the post-traumatic stress disorder was so severe that "stupid things would trigger me to cry," Alexander says, including a dead houseplant. In chats with colleagues, one question recurred: Why stay in a hard, dangerous, seemingly thankless job?

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