A quick warning.
There are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show.
If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org Kelsey Irby isn't somebody who likes being in the spotlight.
In fact, kind of the opposite.
And she wasn't willing to get in the newspaper the night that she did the thing that got her national attention.
She's just showing up to work like normal at the emergency room at a hospital and hour or so outside Seattle St.
Michael's Medical Center.
So that night when I came in at seven, I was looking at the number of patients that were there, which was high.
Like really high.
People were all over the lobby in a messy chaos, sitting in wheelchairs because there weren't enough regular chairs sitting on the floor, sick kids and their parents, ambulance crews with patients waiting to be seen.
Kelsey says it was like an airport gate where the flight's just been canceled.
A lot of dissatisfaction, a lot of unrest, and she was short staffed.
Kelsey's a charge nurse, so it's her job to make sure all these patients get seen and that she has enough staff to do that.
Which has been a problem since COVID at hospitals all over the country, hers included.
So many nurses burned out and left the profession since COVID that it's left hospitals perpetually short staffed.
Which Kelsey points out, makes the job that much more stressful for the nurses who stayed and leads to more of them saying that they can't take it, throwing in the towel, making the problem worse.
The people who run Kelsey's hospital say their staffing levels are in line with national standards and best practices.
But Kelsey says typically she only has half the nurses she should have for the night shift, half.
So I was already short staffed and then I was going to be two more down.
Two of my 7 o'clock nurses had called in sick and if that weren't.