I appreciate your perspective as a unionized nurse. I don't blame our nurses at all, and I understand where they are coming from. I guess I just wish our nurses had better protections so that striking wouldn't be necessary. And as I mentioned in another comment, at the very least there has to be better oversight during strikes to ensure patients are kept safe.

We did have replacement temporary agency nurses and were able to keep appropriate nursing ratios; the issue was more that many units suddenly had no nurses with experience working in our hospital system, and treatments were either delayed or entirely missed. I'm not an administrator and don't work behind the scenes, but I imagine all the boxes were checked and they did everything by the book. But it doesn't change the fact that it wasn't enough. Hospitals should have oversight so this doesn't happen again.