“This Is What You Signed Up for”: Oral Histories of New York State Nurses During the COVID-19 Pandemic

One of the first healthcare providers in New York City to die from COVID-19 was a nurse. When the city was already seeing hundreds of cases a day at area hospitals, particularly in neighborhoods already marginalized by health and economic disparities, nurses at one hospital in the Bronx staged a demonstration to protest the lack of essential personal protective equipment. The astounding response by hospital administrators was to threaten nurses that they would be fired if they continued to speak out regarding their concerns. Like many activists, healthcare providers took to social media to warn the public about the realities of both the COVID-19 crisis and the threats to the health and safety of their own families. However, in at least one Facebook thread, the response to nurses was, “This is what you signed up for.” As scholars of women’s history, we have to wonder about the irony of nurses being lauded as heroes in one breath and criticized as hand-wringing turncoats in another. Did such a callous response have anything to do with the fact that nursing is still considered to be a “feminized” profession? As it turns out, nurses—who are always at the forefront of patient care—were right to raise the alarm. By mid-June, more than 140 nurses in the United States were estimated to have died from COVID-19. Countless others continue to put their lives on the line to do the jobs they have committed to do every day. This article does what some hospital administrators and health officials did not. We listen to nurses. Through oral history interviews, we highlight what nurses in the New York metropolitan area, one of the epicenters of the pandemic, experienced during this staggering healthcare crisis.