It doesn't help that hospital systems tend to be garbage at customer service, so the person's been told to wait an indefinite (but always very long) period without any indication of how long it'll be, and asked to tediously fill out the same information five different times on five different pieces of paper and iPads, all while feeling terrible, before they finally snap at a poor nurse who isn't to blame for their hospital being an uncaring money-making machine with little regard for humanity.

This is also my experience being married to a nurse. Any story I have about a boss, coworker, or client being a jerk, she has about five stories about someone being bad enough that I'd already be shooting resumes toward anyone who will take me.

She's been punched in the face by a patient, she's had coworkers who sabotage each other due to personal vendettas, she's had bosses go on racist tirades in meetings, and on and on and on. As I remind my wife whenever she has a particularly awful day, there's a reason why the classic NP-hard CS problem is literally named the Nurse Scheduling Problem[1]. And yes, she's considering a career change.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_scheduling_problem

This isn't particularly reasonable analysis. A large chunk of the unvaccinated population is elderly and contraindicated for vaccination or in hospice care. From talking with nurses, the elderly population has its own set of problems and frustrations. Imagine trying to administer care to someone who has no idea why they're in a hospital setting. Similarly, vaccination status in American COVID-hospitalization research classifies people of unknown vaccination status as unvaccinated. These people are often homeless, isolated and elderly, or mentally unwell and unable to provide reliable information to caregivers. Again, likely unpleasant to work with.

Grouping these people as conspiratorial is unfair and seems politically motivated. While you definitely have some overlap with conspiratorial people, people have a right to be skeptical of medical care, which is often incorrect and potentially life threatening. Being able to explain things concisely and with evidence is a core skill for a nurse, much like being able to explain to someone why their technical decisions are setting them up for failure is a core skill for a software architect.

But from talking to nurses, this isn't the drive for negative workplace satisfaction. Patients who are hospitalized are less likely to be mentally stable: many pathways to hospitalization come from extremely poor decision making, and many of these people are repeatedly hospitalized. Combine this with the fact that it's a very physical job, primarily handled by women, and you have a multi-faceted problem that's not as easy to solve as just giving people right-think.

Personally I think the pathway to fixing this is appropriately valuing nursing care, what is often a highly-skilled profession with large physical, legal, and downstream risk, and compensating people appropriately. While nursing is a disproportionately paid job relative to educational requirements, current compensation really doesn't accurately account for just how demanding a job it is.

The amount of nurses you see who become addicted to painkillers, benzos, etc., is truly sad. Much like teaching, it's an area where I feel that society is inaccurately evaluating what the overall impact could be if the role functioned well.

Half of the toxic problem is from the people being treated. The other half (and sometimes more than half) is from management and co-workers (i.e. doctors). Not all doctors are bad but enough of them are to make an impact.

There's a culture problem there.