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The rhetoric of war is regularly applied to health care, whether we’re talking about a patient “fighting” cancer or “frontline” workers like nurses engaged in a “battle” or a “war” against a new infectious disease. This is a habit beloved of speech makers, academics, and journalists, and it’s likely to continue.

With strong metaphors comers real responsibility.

Rather than decrying this practice in favor of a more purely accurate use of language, the author of this month’s Viewpoint, Lorri Birkholz, DNP, RN, NE-BC, an assistant professor of nursing at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, argues that the choice to use such language comes with responsibility.

“If war language is going to be used to define this pandemic and the nurses caring for patients, then legislation must ensure care for their acute and long-term physical and mental well-being.”

Birkholz notes that federal COVID-relief legislation limited provisions for frontline workers to temporary hazard pay and mandated sick leave—far short, by way of comparison, of that received by 9/11 first responders or returning war veterans.

The urgent need for long-term mental and physical health support for nurses.

She points out as well that we are already seeing long-term mental and physical health effects in nurses and other health care workers from this long period of working under extraordinary conditions month after month. The news lately has been full of this hard truth, one that’s usually kept out of sight behind hospital doors.

What would it mean to take nurses and the work they do seriously, and to really offer them meaningful support at every level? This question isn’t merely rhetorical to the many who are considering leaving nursing.

Writes Birkholz:

“No trinket, snack, or massage will fix the care providers who have borne the weight of caring for patients under such challenging circumstances.”

Viewpoints in AJN are free to read. Read “Using War Language in a Pandemic: Rhetoric or Responsibility?” and let us know your thoughts.