The American nurse Tristan Kate Smith committed suicide, and her writings before she died gave us a lot of information about why she might have done this.
Tristan Smith was a nurse who often talked about how she felt about working in healthcare and how little help healthcare workers got, especially during the pandemic. She was from Ohio and was 28 years old. She wrote a letter that is now going around to show the real problems nurses face.
“A Letter to My Abuser,” the title of her letter, said, “The compliments, the pizzas, and the ‘thank you’ letters gradually lost their meaning to me…”We beg on our knees, but you don’t pay attention. If we do a good job, we’ll get free pens and a pizza party.
She said, “There is no help.”
She killed herself and was found dead in her home by her dad, Ron Smith. Ron talked about how Tristan talked about her job. She was afraid that someone would shoot up the place or that she would get hurt at work, he said.
He said, “She told me she was going to cry before she went to work.” Ron went on, “She said the only time she’d take a break was to grab a sandwich on her way to the bathroom and eat a few bites.” That woman should start considering a new job, I told her.
In October, her dad Ron Smith put her letter in an Ohio newspaper. Since then, many people have talked about the letter’s details online. Because of this, a lot of other nurses have agreed with Tristan and said that they worked in bad conditions and that harassment of female nurses has gotten a lot worse.
U.S. hospitals are getting more and more stressful because of problems with hiring, fraud, and nurses and doctors who are overworked. Ron Smith is trying to get the word out about the problems in healthcare right now and shed light on them.
