This spring, a book by a pair of Canadian nurses hit the number-one spot on the bestseller list. The Wisdom of Nurses: Stories of Grit From the Front Lines is by Sara Fung and Amie Archibald-Varley, the hosts of the wildly popular podcast The Gritty Nurse. I was surprised to learn that there are celebrity nurses in Canada with an international following. (If you have a nurse friend or relative, they probably know all about The Gritty Nurse.)
The podcast started in 2021, when nurses were seriously burned out. Many had left the profession during COVID, hospitals were understaffed and nurses felt underappreciated. Fung and Archibald-Varley speak frankly about the workplace conditions nurses face and have become high-profile advocates for nurses’ rights.
For Maclean’s, Fung has written about the daily roller coaster of being a nurse. What she describes is truly harrowing—patients assaulting nurses, bosses ignoring complaints. Fung makes a case for legislation that would afford nurses more workplace protections, access to stress leave and other mental health supports. “Instead of funnelling money into recruiting international nurses,” she says, “provincial governments can take concrete steps to protect (and, therefore, retain) nurses here at home.”
–Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief
