Kevyn Paul, PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center, Springfield, OR.
Critical Condition
By Anna Ward & Sylvia Davidow
Photographer Evan Susswood
Photographer Eliott Coda
Nurses across the region have faced hardship, loss and struggle in the workplace. Despite all of this, they still fight on, providing patient care in the midst of the chaos.
Heather Herbert next to her car and mediacl supplies for her career as a hospice nurse.
“It's one of the best and worst things that I've ever done in my life. What we did and how many people we saved,” Thiret said
Days at Kaiser Sunnyside feel calmer than his time in the military. The pinnacle of Thiret’s job is his patients. However, between being constantly short-staffed and trying to fill in the gaps while raising a seventeen-year-old, Thiret misses quality time with his patients.
He believes life is about putting love and labor into a plethora of minute tasks.
“I don't have to be the best at one thing. I just need to be good at everything,” Thiret said.
Around 2 p.m., Herbert arrives home after a fairly easy day of checking up on her patients. She changes into comfortable clothes, sits at her office desk and types away at her computer, checking up on her patients’ families while her cat Cheesecake purrs in her lap. Herbert officially clocks off at 4:30 p.m. and can now focus on dinner with her boyfriend and his daughter.
She talks with her boyfriend while assembling ingredients. Tonight they’re eating pasta with Alfredo, broccoli and pesto chicken. As the two crack jokes, his daughter finishes her French homework at the kitchen counter. Herbert loves cooking because she gets to pair one of her creative outlets with shared quality time.
As dinner comes to an end, everyone makes their way to the fold-out couch to relax. The three watch TV and chat, and after a few hours, Herbert is ready for bed. Once her head hits the pillow, she closes her eyes, tomorrow she will do it all again.
At 5:30 a.m., Heather Herbert rises with the sun. The pop hit “About Damn Time” by Lizzo plays as she gets out of bed.
She shuffles to her kitchen, brews a fresh pot of coffee and prepares some oatmeal; a meal that will sustain her throughout the busy day of meeting with patients. Herbert is a hospice nurse with PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Home Care Services. It is her first week back with her patients since the Eugene-area nursing strike ended.
After breakfast, she bundles up and signals to her schnauzer Harley it's time for their morning walk in the brisk, winter air. Upon returning home, Herbert squeezes in 15 minutes of guitar practice before her shower.
After selecting her favorite work outfit — a flowery, everyday blouse paired with red scrub pants — Herbert grabs her lunch and says goodbye to her pets, heads out the door and drives off in her 2002 Volkswagen Golf.
Busy, early mornings don’t bother Herbert. She would do anything for her patients. She self-identifies as a “mama bear” and treats her patients like her kids. It was painful for Herbert to leave her patients in the hands of temporary nurses while chanting for better working conditions in front of the RiverBend Annex building in Springfield. A strike that lasted two weeks.
“You feel like you left your kids with an unknown babysitter,” Herbert said.
Nurses across Oregon are facing major shifts in their workplace. Between the closures of low-staffed hospitals and the inability to make a living wage, it's hard to remain positive in a job that is about providing care for patients in need.
This shift is not specific to Oregon. All around the nation, nurses experiencing burnout have opted to move to different hospital-level positions for better pay. Others have decided to leave the healthcare industry altogether. To date,“88% of nurses voice concerns about the detrimental effects of staffing shortages on patient care,” according to the Incredible Health’s 2024 State of US Nursing Report.
The main contributor is burnout, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Despite the hardships they face, nurses are still holding on, fighting for a stable career in the healthcare industry. Nursing, a job that is about giving essential care to people who need it most, has become a fight to stay positive in the midst of corporate battles, abrupt closures and staffing shortages. Above all, it’s a fight for nurses to maintain their humanity.
Around five miles away, in the PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend emergency department, charge nurse Kevyn Paul is dealing with patient backlog. Paul yearns to be more proactive with her staff, but due to a crowded ER lobby, she’s reactive to dealing with situations as they come up.
Paul transferred to RiverBend after her old hospital, PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at University District, shut down in December. She recalls the memories of caring for the people at University District.
“We formed a very tight community. It was a community setting before Riverbend opened,” Paul said.
She likes working with a team. However, at RiverBend, Paul is finding her new job more isolating than before. Her days are filled with patient care, something she loves, but she longs for the collaboration and shared laughs she had at University District.
“A workplace can be a kind of a community and a kind of family,” Paul said. “A rather dysfunctional family.”
Today, Paul is busy on her feet as patients continue to flow in and out of the lobby. They stream into rooms and out the door or upstairs to more waiting and other stressed nurses. Running around and making sure doctors have all the supplies they need to treat each person is Paul’s way of ensuring patient care.
“What I like about all of this is being able to make a positive difference for other people,” Paul said.
Hospice care tends to look different from hospital care. Herbert is on her patient’s schedule, providing end-of-life care that keeps patients comfortable throughout their final days.
‘“Breaking the rules” is something Herbert likes to do. If a patient is worried constantly about their blood sugar, once they enter hospice care, they’re free to eat all the cake they want. “We get to figure out how to comfortably and safely celebrate the life that's happening rather than think about the inevitable future,” she said.
One of Herbert’s prized possessions is a sticker saying “Don’t grow up, it's a trap.” The sticker is a reminder for her to stay playful and curious in life. When she is with her patients is when she is most playful, dancing around their room and singing made-up songs: a form of care.
Her time with her patients reminders her that life is precious and it’s important to cherish it.
Someone who cherishes life to the fullest is Nick Thiret, a military veteran and current operating room nurse at Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center in Clackamas.
Thiret lives in a 99-year-old house located in Oak Grove — a lush, green suburb just south of Portland.
Thiret is content with his job in surgery. He loves the mechanics of it all.
“Standing two feet from someone's skull that's open and you're looking at their brain is amazing,” he said. “It's like how many people get to do that?”
Thiret was entranced by surgeries after viewing a PBS health program while he was studying accounting at a community college. That program prompted him to join the military where he trained as a surgeon tech.
He served time in Somalia as his second duty station where he helped operate a makeshift hospital in the midst of the Battle of Mogadishu. In Somalia, Thiret worked in 36-hour shifts, constantly going into surgeries and sterilizing instruments, then trying to sleep before doing it all again.
Nick Thiret in front of his home, Portland, OR.