Nurses called it a dramatic example of what can go wrong when health care workers don’t get enough sleep.
Boston police say an officer who arrived at Faulkner Hospital early on the morning of May 17 saw a badly damaged white Grand Cherokee, part of the guardrail of Faulkner’s top-floor parking garage missing and an injured woman being treated by paramedics.
Boston Fire told the officer that the woman had somehow driven the vehicle from the top floor of the garage.
A source tells Boston 25 News that an exhausted nurse on call fell asleep after putting the car in reverse. However, according to the police report, the woman stepped on the gas instead of the brake, causing the car to fall out of the garage front first. The woman told police she had finished her shift but was available from 11 p.m. She decided that instead of going home, she would sleep in her car. Around 1am she moved to get away from the lights – and that’s when the incident happened.
A Faulkner employee tells Boston 25 News the vehicle landed on a nearby shed before hitting a brushy area to the side.
Massachusetts Nurses Association spokesman Joe Markman confirmed the driver was a nurse. While this incident was particularly dramatic, MNA said it is not uncommon for nurses to be involved in accidents on the way home – due to extreme fatigue caused by long shifts, sometimes mandatory overtime and a lack of adequate assistance. (It is unknown what level of exhaustion this nurse was experiencing, nor what her working conditions are.)
Rebecca Furst knows all about dealing with fatigue.
She recently retired after working as a nurse for more than 40 years, most recently at Newton-Wellesley Hospital.
“I really sympathize with the nurse and I can certainly understand how it happened,” Furst said. “I don’t think people realize how tiring this job is.”
Furst said the public underestimates the physical and emotional toll nurses pay just by performing their jobs: from moving heavy patients to the stress of performing life-saving procedures to dealing with death.
“I mean, I’ve driven home after a day at work with the window open and hit my face to keep myself awake,” Furst said.
Nurses make up the largest portion of America’s healthcare team. But recent studies make it clear that working conditions influence these figures.
The American College of Nursing recently reported that a quarter of registered nurses plan to leave the profession in some way within the next five years.
Gen. Brigham said they are investigating the incident but could not confirm if the injured party was a worker, let alone a nurse.
Furst said the incident is a cautionary tale that some things in nursing need to change.
“It was a 22-mile ride for me when I was working – and I was exhausted,” Furst said. “And you know you don’t want to have an accident. There must be another way. There has to be another way.”
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