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Healthcare professionals on Reddit—particularly registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical/vocational nurses (LPNs/LVNs), and certified nursing assistants (CNAs)—have been voicing their frustrations about chronic staffing problems.
One example is the explosive r/nursing thread “Realistically, what is the solution to staffing problems?” (Mar 21, 2023), where an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse asked how to keep patient ratios safe amidst a “collapsing healthcare system.”
We decided to take a deeper look.
The discussions prompted in that thread and others in 2022–2024 reveal recurring pain points and potential solutions from the bedside perspective. This report summarizes key themes, sentiment, and trends from these Reddit discussions to inform solutions targeting healthcare staffing issues.
Key themes from the “solution to staffing problems” thread
In the 2023 thread, “Realistically, what is the solution to staffing problems?” nurses overwhelmingly agreed that better compensation and working conditions are the realistic solutions to the staffing crisis.
Overall, the main thread’s answers revealed common themes across a spectrum of nursing professionals.
Trifecta: Money, benefits, and respect
Many answers centered on pay, benefits, and respect as the trifecta needed to resolve the crisis. Simply paying nurses well, providing good benefits, and treating them with respect would attract and retain staff. Many others echoed that pay needs to reflect the workload and that token gestures (like pizza parties) don’t suffice.
Safe staffing ratios and workload
Nurses stressed that unsafe patient loads are driving people away. One nurse noted, “Most [nurses] left bedside because of staffing ratios and work load… [Constantly] determining where I can cut corners to save time without endangering the patient is not how I want to provide care.”
Overwhelming workloads force nurses to “cut corners” and leave many feeling they cannot provide adequate care, contributing to burnout.
Retention of experienced staff
Several comments emphasized keeping veteran nurses. New hires alone won’t fix the issue if experienced nurses continue to quit. “Make sure to pay the old nurses well too… so they will stick around,” one ED nurse wrote. Retaining institutional knowledge was seen as crucial for stabilizing staffing.
Management and organizational culture
Many felt that hospital leadership needed to change its approach. Nurses are tired of being treated as “disposable.”
As one commenter put it, “Leadership has no interest in our wellbeing. Make staffing their issue, not ours… I showed up ready to serve a reasonable assignment.” Others criticized the practice of squeezing staffing to save money: “Once they know a unit can run with 3 RNs & 2 LPNs, then that’s all we’ll get – doesn’t matter if we’re drowning.” There is a strong sense that hospital administrators prioritize cost over safety, eroding trust and respect.
Workplace safety and support
Beyond nurse-to-patient ratios, nurses raised concerns about a lack of support staff and dealing with difficult patients.
A nurse in the thread noted their psych unit has more techs than nurses, which vastly improves workflow. Another suggested hiring more aides and unit clerks since “My job as a nurse is so much easier [with good support staff]… These folks are invaluable and can be trained very quickly.”
Dealing with abusive or demanding patients/families was also mentioned: “We need a better plan for dealing with abusive/entitled patients and families… no other situation does such a poor job of setting boundaries.”
Nurses feel that the emotional toll grows without backup (in terms of ancillary staff and administrative policies).
Flexibility and work-life balance
To improve retention, nurses discussed scheduling improvements. Ideas ranged from ensuring real breaks (some noted they get “30 min in 13 hours,” which is not sustainable) to offering shorter workweeks or split roles to combat burnout.
One highly-upvoted comment proposed offering flexible schedules (like part-time shifts in less acute areas) so nurses can recharge. Night shift differentials and treating night duty as a valued specialty were also suggested to reduce burnout on off-hours.
Training and pipeline
A controversial but popular suggestion in the thread was to streamline nursing education.
A user advocated returning to the ADN (associate degree) as the standard entry, arguing, “Unless the BSN curriculum abandons nursing theory it adds nothing to practice… Remove 2 years of study to motivate nurses into the workforce faster.” They also called for making nursing school free (or low-cost) to boost the pipeline.
This sparked discussion about whether current education requirements create barriers. A CNA in the thread lamented, “I desperately want to be a nurse but I can’t possibly afford school… How the hell did we make it through the pandemic without the gov’t stepping up to help people like me?”
Educational cost and capacity are thus seen as pain points, though secondary to working conditions.
Sentiment analysis: Frustration overwhelms optimism
The sentiment across these discussions is overwhelmingly frustrated and disgruntled. Nurses describe feeling “done” and burned out by what they see as greed-driven staffing practices. Blunt anger at hospital administration is common, and the tone is often cynical.
When someone in the 2023 thread earnestly suggested “money, benefits, respect,” another quipped, “Oh sorry—best you get is two, maybe one of those”, implying nurses expect their needs won’t be fully met.
Several themes color the emotional tone: exhaustion, moral distress, and disillusionment. Nurses talk about crying after shifts, feeling unable to care for patients the way they want, and being treated as “widgets” rather than humans.
The sense of being undervalued pervades the threads. Many share stories of leaving the bedside or even the profession entirely for the sake of their own mental and physical health. As one nurse put it: “I refuse to work in horrible conditions even if there is money in it. I’d rather be broke than damage my health…I refuse to sell my soul.” Burnout is not just a buzzword here—it’s viscerally described in personal terms.
On the positive side, solidarity and determination occasionally shine through. Nurses support each other in these forums, reassuring colleagues that “You deserved better” after a bad shift.
There’s a camaraderie in commiseration—simply knowing others feel the same helps.
A few comments offer hopeful notes, usually tied to specific improvements. For instance, nurses who work at better-staffed facilities share their experiences to prove conditions can improve.
One VA nurse noted their floor is consistently well-staffed with no one having more than five patients, highlighting that when nurses are paid six figures and staffed adequately, retention is high.
Such examples are rare but show a glimmer of what right looks like, providing a positive contrast to the norm.
In general, however, the mood is pessimistic about the current “collapsing healthcare system.” Many express a fatalism that nothing will change unless nurses themselves take action (e.g., unionize or refuse unsafe assignments).
The notion that nursing is a “calling” is actively pushed back on, reflecting a desire for practical improvements over sentimental platitudes.
In summary, anger and fatigue dominate the sentiment, with most positivity directed at the idea of systemic change rather than the status quo.
The most upvoted comments reinforce the following: pay us what we’re worth, don’t overload us, treat us with basic respect, and you’ll retain staff. Comments also show an appetite among nurses for bold changes (education reform, union action) to break the cycle.
The consensus in these threads is strong and surprisingly unified across different roles and specialties, which underlines how universal these pain points have become in nursing.
Similar threads (2022–2024) and evolving trends
Searching other Reddit threads from the past three years (using keywords like “nursing shortage” and “staffing” in acute and long-term care contexts) shows that the same core issues persist, though the focus has shifted slightly over time, as follows:
- Staffing and pay remained top concerns every year.
- Discussion of management problems became even more prominent by 2024.
- Burnout was highly discussed in 2022 (post-COVID peak) but slightly less so later, as many burnt-out nurses had already left or adapted.
- Support staff and education are important, but were mentioned somewhat less often than the core trio of staffing, pay, and management.
- Discussions in 2022 focused on burnout and the immediate aftermath of the COVID exodus.
- In 2023, topics shifted to identifying root causes and demanding respect/compensation.
- Conversations in 2024 are marked by a rallying cry for action and a refusal to accept the old excuses.
2020–2021
During the peak of COVID-19, discussions were heavily focused on exhaustion, PPE shortages, and trauma.
2022
As the acute phase of the pandemic eased, conversations shifted to “Why are so many nurses leaving?”
Many nurses posted that COVID was the breaking point that pushed them out of bedside nursing. A widely discussed thread in 2022 posed, “Is there truly a nursing shortage?”
The top answers concluded that it’s not a true shortage of qualified nurses—it’s that nurses won’t tolerate hospital conditions anymore.
In 2022, many veteran nurses left due to burnout, and those remaining point to working conditions (and presence or absence of unions) as the differentiator. In 2022 threads, burnout was a dominant theme—nurses talked about mental health, some even about leaving the profession entirely for different careers.
Pay was discussed, but interestingly, some said no amount of money could compensate for the stress. As one 2022 commenter put it, “I’d rather be broke than ruin my health.” Moral injury (witnessing excessive patient suffering and death) was fresh in 2022 discussions, given the pandemic experiences.
2023
By 2023, especially mid-year, the tone had shifted to frustration and seeking solutions. Threads show nurses becoming more outspoken against hospital administration.
In 2023, compensation took center stage alongside staffing. With many nurses having left, those remaining started demanding higher pay to stay.
One post in late 2023 famously stated: “Reminder: There’s not a nursing shortage. There’s a shortage of folks willing to pay nurses.” This quote was shared and upvoted widely, indicating how by 2023 the community was coalescing around the idea that hospitals can fix this if they invest in nurses.
Also in 2023, the idea of “travel nurse money” or competitive pay came up frequently—nurses expected higher wages given how travel contracts had proven their market value in 2021. When those wages fell in 2023, many felt insulted that no permanent adjustments were made at their staff jobs.
Additionally, 2023 threads saw more open talk of unionizing and political action (e.g., nurses discussing pending laws on staffing ratios or celebrating states that passed safe staffing legislation).
The focus broadened from individual grievances to collective solutions. That said, frustration was at an all-time high. Numerous posts essentially said the system is broken and “lots of people [will be] dying” if nothing changes.
A late 2023 comment predicted a two-tiered healthcare system as the endgame, where only some hospitals adhere to safety regulations, reflecting nurses’ fear that the worst hospitals will continue unsafe practices unabated.
2024
In early 2024, as the staffing crisis continued, the tone on Reddit became even more urgent and no-nonsense.
By this point, nurses are less inclined to “explain” the problem—it’s been rehashed enough—and more inclined to call out management’s excuses.
One 2024 thread titled “New level of shortage” laments that despite the unprecedented severity of the crisis, hospitals still hadn’t changed course. The top comment on that thread again hammered that there isn’t actually a shortage: There is simply a shortage of nurses willing to work in these conditions for this pay.
This statement became almost a refrain. The anger behind it is palpable and widely shared.
Nurses discuss how hospitals are even turning to foreign recruitment and visa sponsorships (which agencies have done for years) instead of fixing core issues. Reddit nurses often view this negatively, not out of disrespect to foreign nurses, but because it’s seen as a band-aid that further exploits labor (foreign recruits may be brought in on lower pay, under contract).
The global dimension underscores how desperate the staffing situation is, but also how hospitals will try anything except improving conditions for existing staff.
Another trend in 2024 is nurses talking about leverage. With so many having left, those remaining note that entire units are closing beds due to a lack of staff, and some suggest using that leverage to demand improvements (or leaving for better jobs, as some did).
Union strikes and labor actions in places like New York and California (which made news in 2023–24) are frequently referenced on Reddit, often with encouragement that nurses elsewhere follow suit.
In essence, by 2024, the Reddit nurse community seems to have moved from simply venting to actively saying, “enough is enough.” The tone is combative: Nurses compare their struggle to a fight against corporate greed in healthcare. “Us vs. them” (frontline vs. administration) is an explicit theme in many comments.
One nurse rallied others: “They have a drive to increase the patient burden, decrease pay and benefits, and give us nothing. We need to fight for every inch of it… Get yourself organized, take some risks and fight for improved working conditions. They aren’t going to just hand it to you.”
Recurring pain points for nurses
Across multiple Reddit threads from 2022 through 2024, nurses consistently pinpointed a set of recurring pain points driving the staffing crisis. These pain points are interrelated and often compound one another.
Understaffing is caused by burnout and turnover, which in turn are caused by low pay, poor support, and so on. Nurses on Reddit recognize these connections.
1. Understaffing & unsafe ratios
Chronic short-staffing is the number one complaint. Nurses are routinely assigned more patients than they believe is safe, leading to dangerous conditions for patients and workers alike. This was evident in every thread, from acute care to long-term care.
In one extreme case, a nurse in a nursing home was “a charge nurse over FIFTY PATIENTS with one CNA,” with residents going weeks without baths due to a lack of hands.
While that is an outlier, even hospital nurses talk about having six to seven patients on med-surg or three or more in ICU, which they feel is far too many.
Understaffing not only endangers patients but also means nurses must skip breaks and go home late, accelerating burnout.
It creates a vicious cycle: understaffing → nurse burnout/exodus → worse staffing.
Virtually all other pain points tie back to this root issue of too few staff members for patient acuity.
2. Low pay & benefits
Inadequate compensation is a universally cited issue, though nurses often mention pay in the same breath as staffing.
Many feel they are not paid enough for the intensity of work and stress they endure.
Nurses compare their responsibilities, which can literally have life-or-death repercussions, to those of other jobs and conclude the pay doesn’t match the pressure. Benefits like health insurance, PTO, maternity leave, and retirement support are also lacking in many workplaces.
One highly-upvoted comment noted that nurses want to be treated like employees with normal needs: “Pay them a living wage, give raises, benefits and vacation. Don’t fire them for being sick, have maternity leave and support families.”
Several users pointed out that travel nurses and agency staff earn far more, which bred resentment among staff RNs before many quit to travel. By 2023, even travel rates had dropped, but the consensus remained that wages had not kept up with inflation or job demands.
Thus, compensation is seen as both a practical and symbolic issue—it’s about making a living but also about feeling valued.
3. Poor management & lack of respect
Nurses overwhelmingly blame hospital administrators and management for the staffing crisis. There is a perception (often supported by anecdotes) that executives prioritize profits and cost-cutting over nurse wellbeing. Nurses frequently mentioned that they feel like “numbers” or “widgets” to management.
For instance, one Redditor shared that their nursing home administrator literally cut costs by taking away residents’ snacks and reducing staffing to unsafe levels, all while hiding in her office for hours.
In hospitals, nurses describe managers who ignore pleas for help or who offer only hollow rewards. The meme of getting “a pizza party” instead of a raise or safe staffing is a running joke. One user snarked, “How do you spell respect? Pizza party.”
Middle management bloat is another sore point. One comment suggested eliminating half of nursing middle management, saying most of those roles “exist for regulatory compliance” rather than to support floor staff. This was met with agreement by peers who see managers as disconnected from bedside realities.
Crucially, respect (or lack thereof) underpins this category. Nurses want to be heard in decision-making levels and treated as skilled professionals, not as easily replaceable cogs.
Many nurses believe hospital leaders won’t change until forced—hence the calls for unions and collective action (more on that below).
4. Burnout & mental health strain
The toll of the above factors is massive burnout. Emotional exhaustion, moral injury, and even PTSD from the past few years of pandemic and staffing crises are frequently mentioned.
Nurses describe going home in tears, feeling like “bad nurses” because they couldn’t possibly get to every task. “I’m done feeling this way, being in a lose-lose situation,” the original poster of the “solution” thread confessed.
Common sentiments include feeling unsafe (worrying a mistake will happen due to rushing), feeling unsupported, and watching personal health decline (back injuries, mental breakdowns, etc.).
One commenter noted that after experiencing trauma, such as multiple patient deaths in a shift, nurses get no time to decompress. “We watch people die and don’t even get a few minutes to decompress,” they wrote, highlighting the absence of debriefs or counseling.
The “calling” myth—the idea that nurses should endure anything for the love of the job—intensifies burnout, as it discourages nurses from prioritizing their own wellbeing.
The “treat us like humans (not heroes or machines)” sentiment, which rejects the martyr narrative, also gathered much support. This sentiment resonated with many nurses who are tired of being lauded as “heroes” but work to exhaustion without support.
Many nurses on Reddit openly talk about quitting, going part-time, or switching to lower-stress nursing roles (e.g. clinics, school nursing, telehealth) despite pay cuts simply to protect themselves.
Nurse burnout is both a consequence of the other pain points and a key driver of nurses leaving, which further worsens staffing.
It’s a central theme in these discussions and something nurses want addressed through better staffing, mental health support, and reasonable workloads.
5. Lack of support staff & resources
Nurses often end up doing non-nursing tasks because of insufficient support personnel (like nursing assistants, unit secretaries, transporters, and housekeeping staff).
A recurring gripe is that when budgets tighten, ancillary staff are cut first, leaving nurses to fill the gaps. This might mean the nurse is answering phones, transporting patients, cleaning rooms, drawing labs, doing all documentation, and more, on top of nursing care.
“When the phone is ringing off the hook, I’m doing every accucheck on my DKA patient, and every turn requires me to bug another nurse, patient care suffers and nurses get burnt out,” one RN explained, arguing that aides and clerks are “invaluable” and also cost-effective to employ.
In the threads, nurses praised environments that have robust support staff. For example, a psych nurse said their unit “runs like a fine-tuned machine” because “we have more techs than nurses” and expressed hope that those techs are paid well.
Another aspect of support is having proper equipment and supplies.
In understaffed nursing homes, nurses reported lacking basic supplies. One was initially refused a new Foley catheter by a supply clerk due to cost control, risking a patient’s health, until she insisted on sending the patient to the ER.
These scenarios, while varied, all point to the need for adequate support for nurses to do their jobs. Without aides, nurses’ time is stretched even thinner. Without functional equipment or sufficient supplies, stress increases and care is delayed.
Nurses see investing in support staff and logistics as a “quick win” that would alleviate some burden: Support staff can be trained faster than nurses, and can free RNs to focus on clinical duties.
Notably, nurses mention this pain point as solvable if management chose to, which circles back to frustration with leadership priorities.
6. Training, education & staffing pipeline issues
While less frequently voiced by actively practicing nurses, many discussions acknowledge problems in the nursing pipeline, which ultimately feed the staffing issue.
Two sub-themes emerge: education costs/length and new nurse training/onboarding.
Regarding education, as mentioned, there are calls to reduce barriers (tuition, length of programs).
Some nurses feel the push for BSN-over-ADN (often driven by hospital Magnet status goals) is misguided and excludes capable people.
“There are literally so many of us [licensed nurses]… so many RNs that chose to leave and find different careers,” one commenter noted, “who among us honestly thinks that university-educated nurses are outperforming diploma nurses?”
They argue that making ADN programs free or low-cost could quickly bolster the workforce.
Additionally, a lack of nursing faculty and limited clinical seats means thousands of qualified applicants are turned away from nursing schools each year (per data one user shared from AACN). This is a systemic issue, and nurses on Reddit are aware of it, even if it’s not something they can fix directly.
The second aspect is how new grads are handled. Sink-or-swim orientation and high turnover among new nurses were frequently mentioned. “My hospital churns and burns new grads every year and loses experienced nurses all the time,” one nurse observed, noting the cycle of poor retention.
New nurses often feel unprepared and unsupported (especially if units are so short that preceptors can’t properly mentor). In one thread, a novice nurse in long-term care begged for advice on coping because other nurses were “too busy to train me… there is no support.” This highlights that without structural support for onboarding, new hires quickly leave, exacerbating the shortage.
Lastly, some nurses point out a lack of collective advocacy in the profession as a meta-issue. “We should have more political power… millions of nurses exist,” said one nurse, yet change is slow. This suggests a need for better organization (unions, professional groups) to address education, staffing laws, and workplace conditions at a policy level.
Solve the nurse shortage by solving workplace problems
Across 2022–2024, nurses on Reddit delivered a clear and consistent message about staffing problems.
If you want to solve the nursing shortage, solve the workplace.
In essence, hospitals and other healthcare facilities must invest in nurses (both financially and by improving daily work conditions) if they hope to stop the exodus.
The overall sentiment is that nurses feel unsupported and exploited, yet they are passionate about patient care and the profession—evidenced by how many are advocating for changes rather than silently walking away.
For a company aiming to address healthcare workforce issues, these insights highlight opportunities for positive change:
- Invest in tools or services that improve scheduling and ratio management.
- Support nurses’ mental health.
- Reduce the administrative burden.
- Amplify nurses’ voices to management to target gaps that nurses themselves identify.
- Hire enough nurses and support/ancillary staff to make workloads safe.
- Pay nurses competitively with good benefits.
- Cultivate a respectful culture that values nurses’ wellbeing.
- Make internal policy changes (better staffing grids, improved orientations).
When these needs aren’t met, nurses either leave bedside positions for less stressful roles or quit the profession outright, which we’ve seen in droves.
Any intervention should recognize that at its core, this is a problem of workplace quality.
In the words of one Reddit nurse, “Treat people like humans.” That basic principle underlies much of what nurses are asking for. They want to be able to provide good care without sacrificing their own health and dignity.
Focusing on fixing the day-to-day experience of nurses will not only keep more nurses at the bedside but also draw new entrants to a field that, when supported, so many find rewarding.
The conversation among nurses is no longer just venting—it’s a blueprint for what needs to happen to heal the profession so nurses can get back to healing patients.
To make meaningful change, facilities must fix these core issues. Better staffing is just one piece of the puzzle, but it can help make a difference. A PRN nurse staffing platform like Nursa can help by making it easier to fill shifts, support frontline staff, and create the kind of work environments that keep nurses at the bedside where they’re needed most.
For more staffing insights, check out Nursa’s facility reports and research.
