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The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on healthcare workers, particularly nurses. They faced increased stress, long hours, and a lack of support and resources. Many nurses left their jobs and suffered from mental health issues such as PTSD, depression, and anxiety. The high ethical standards and workload placed on nurses were exacerbated during the pandemic. Nurses also had to deal with the challenges of social distancing, being away from their families and support systems. The pandemic worsened the existing nursing shortage, leaving remaining nurses with a heavier workload. While some organizations tried to address burnout, it was not enough to properly support nurses. They were not provided with sufficient PPE and deserved more help and support. Now, getting into our second part, I think everybody took a hit from the COVID-19 struggles. Everybody no matter what field of work you were in, either you lost your job, you had to start working in a whole new environment, your just entire job might have changed. So as we know, COVID-19 had a huge impact on everything, especially the healthcare workers. They were put under an incredible amount of stress during this time. Many people ended up leaving their healthcare jobs during this time because of all the stress that they were dealing with. ICU nurses were overwhelmed and overworked during this, even more than they usually are, which they are always overworked. They say so many people die from this disease while they are unable to do anything. The stuff they were provided with was not enough. They were not provided with enough support from the U.S. government. They had nowhere near enough PPE. Many nurses came out of the other side of COVID with a plethora of mental health diagnoses. PTSD, depression, anxiety, those are the three major ones that have affected our nursing population. We as a community, as a society, we hold nurses to a very high ethical standard, which we should be seeing as they are handling extremely important information related to people's health. When the pandemic hit, those standards just continued to rise alongside the workload put onto these nurses. Longer shifts were basically required and there were so many nurses, they had to start skipping their lunch breaks, which if I had to start skipping my lunch break, I don't think I'd be able to do it. Insomnia among nurses began to rise. So imagine you're already overworked and you can't sleep. That's awful. Along with having to struggle with these conditions and mental health disorders, many nurses were not around any family. They had no social support along with having to go through whatever they had to go through in the hospital. Due to social distancing, so many nurses started having to live away from their loving families and their support systems. Before COVID even hit the United States, we were already struggling with nursing shortages. Most people already know about that. When the pandemic hit us, it was so much worse. Many nurses left the field completely, thus leaving the remaining ones to do twice or three times their normal workload. The Joint Commission released a statement about nurses' burnout back in July of 2019. So before COVID even happened, they said that around 15.6% of nurses reported burnout, but only 5% of organizations were assisting in combating burnout. That's kind of crazy to me. This was before COVID even happened, again. While I do believe some organizations stepped up during the height of the virus, I don't believe it was enough to properly support nurses. They were not given the PPE they deserved. They were not given any support they deserved. No one came to help them. They were expected to be the saviors of everything, but they deserved help too.