Being afraid you might die at work is an excellent reason to quit

Story of a prison nurse

Sara Burdick
8 min readFeb 1, 2022
Photo by Damir Spanic on Unsplash

I was the new kid on the block, the most recent and youngest nurse. I just turned 24 and walked into one of the most dangerous jobs you can have as a nurse.

Prison nursing is not something for the faint of heart; most nurses are men or older nurses who do not want to work in the hospital and lift patients.

The inmates are walky-talky, which means they are not bedbound and can tell you what they need. We all love a walky-talky unless you are in the ICU, and then we want a vented, sedated, and restrained patient.

I am sure you can imagine working with inmates can be dangerous, except I thought I would stay in the hospital and pass medications from a window.

That was one of the nurse’s jobs; however, that was not my job.

Once I got orientation and the general flow, I was assigned my unit. It would be the same every shift. I worked 3 pm–11 pm; I got an extra $50 just for showing up for work.

I used to work 8 hours in a restaurant to make $50 in tips; I was in heaven 50 bucks just for showing up, on top of my hourly wage!

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Sara Burdick

I quit the rat race after working as a nurse for 16 years. Travel and Storyteller. I live in Colombia. https://linktr.ee/saraaliceburdick