Forbes June 4, 2020
Tener Veenema, a fellow at the American Academy of Nursing; and Diane Meyer, an analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security explain why nurses were not prepared for Covid-19, and how systems can change to better handle future public health emergencies.
As Covid-19 continues to spread across the United States, it has become evident that the country was woefully unprepared to staff, mobilize and protect our nation’s nurses in order to meet the surge of patients presenting with a severe and contagious respiratory disease. This lack of workforce preparedness is particularly shocking in light of warnings that a new pandemic would eventually emerge and the abundance of guidance and lessons learned from other events such as the 2009-2010...