U.S. News

Taylor Crittenden still feels “righteous rage” when she thinks about her experiences at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Crittenden, a nurse at a hospital in Texas, remembers staffing shortages, limitations on personal protective equipment like heavy-duty masks, and long hours as health facilities were being overrun with COVID patients.

“I was impacted by seeing all these people lose their lives,” Crittenden said. “I was also feeling frustrated and quite mad. We just needed more help on the floor. We were the ones in the rooms having these conversations with patients. We were their emotional support and their physical support. And managers and supervisors and directors were nowhere in sight.”

Two years later, Crittenden was among the hundreds of nurses at Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin who voted to unionize. It was a snapshot of the worker power brewing within the health care industry — led in part by nurses, a workforce dominated by women — that received nearly daily public recognition of its crucial role in keeping people healthy and safe while grappling with realities like reduced resources, increasing burnout and health risks.

Now, as nurses mark the five-year anniversary of the first wave of the pandemic, they’re reflecting on their victories in securing protections but also new emerging challenges. Members of National Nurses United (NNU), the nation’s largest union for registered nurses, spoke with The 19th about their ongoing push for worker protections.