Every trip to the emergency room with my mother, age 95, has deepened my appreciation for our undervalued nurses and support staff. The system needs a tune-up that doesn’t involve taking away educational funding, or outsourcing our non-emergent medical care to virtual visits with non-local doctors and practitioners via an app.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nurses now represent more than 50% of the health workforce and are critical to the entire U.S. health care industry.
Virginia ranks second among states projected to have the highest registered nursing shortage rates in 2026 with a 30% deficit, and a net deficit of 25,670 RNs we need but don’t have, and general staffing (32,246 available jobs, accounting for 13% of the state’s total job vacancies according to the Health Resources & Services Administration).
Also, medical/human services managers, totaling more than 10,000, and doctors, totaling 3,911, of whom 1,622 are primary care providers. We also lack enough nursing assistants, home health aides and medical assistants.
It’s worst in Southside with a reported deficit of more than 3,400 health care workers.
The Trump administration’s actions in late 2025 and early 2026 significantly impacted nursing by proposing to reclassify graduate nursing degrees as non-professional.
That would change how much money students in those programs can borrow, limiting them to $20,500 in federal loans each year, with a lifetime cap of $100,000, which could make those degrees unaffordable and deepen the shortage.
That may hinder roles (such as nurse practitioners and certified registered nurse anesthetists), raising education costs, and reducing faculty for the more than 80,000 applicants turned away last year due to teaching staff shortages.
Perception becomes political reality, so let’s talk about how we, as a society, treat nurses and support staff as servants, rather than the “professionals” they are, as they literally do all of the heavy lifting.
When Mom’s in the ER, a scarcity microcosm, I assist as much as the rules allow, lending a hand rather than watching them work.
My mother has been through the Sentara Norfolk General ER three times since Thanksgiving morning, when she suffered three strokes. Most recently, we lived in the ER for 24 hours after she fainted and had a seizure during a home PT session.
Despite the issues of in-person medical care, I wouldn’t trade the ER/outpatient system for the allegedly shortage-induced push by medical “corporate” to have her neurology exam, geriatric specialist, PT and OT taken over by an app with a virtual, non-local provider who can’t hold her hand.
Why? Because my mother, who has vascular dementia and 30-second memory retention, remembers every detail of her new crush, the attending physician who restored her humanity with a laugh.
In the 20th hour of our ER experience, in strode Dr. Mark Flemmer, geriatric/internal medicine, surrounded by a constellation of eager residents.
He gave a Dr. Patch Adams-worthy master class in diagnostics, humor and common sense as he took a classic hands-on approach to get it right. “The trouble with old ladies (wink at Mom) is they have a lot of diseases happening in them, but if we hospitalize them for things we know we cannot reasonably treat to their benefit, we do them more harm than good.”
“Old ladies,” cried Mom in mock horror.
She has gallstones that took her appetite, leading to low potassium and other nutritional and hydration issues.
“Discharge her and make sure she gets a banana every day,” Flemmer said.
More medical details followed, but my ER takeaway is that less is more, except when it comes to nurses.
Lisa Suhay is a writer and a resident of Norfolk.
https://www.dailypress.com/2026/02/07/column-in-defense-of-nurses-and-other-in-person-medical-staff/
