Nursing professionals called it a dramatic example of what can go wrong when health care workers don’t get enough sleep.
Boston police said that early on the morning of May 17, an officer arriving at Faulkner Hospital saw a heavily damaged white Grand Cherokee, part of the Faulkner parking lot guardrail missing from the top floor, and an injured woman being treated by paramedics.
The Boston Fire Department told the officer that somehow the woman had caused the vehicle to fall from the top floor of the garage.
A source tells Boston 25 News that an exhausted nurse on duty fell asleep after putting the car in reverse. However, the police report states that the woman pressed the accelerator instead of the brake and the car fell out of the garage in front. The woman told police she had finished her shift, but was on call from 11 p.m. She decided that rather than going home, she would sleep in her vehicle. Around 1 a.m., she moved to get away from the lights – and that’s when the incident happened.
A Faulkner employee told Boston 25 News the vehicle landed on a nearby shed before tumbling into a brushy area on its side.
Massachusetts Nurses Association spokesman Joe Markman confirmed the driver was a nurse. While this incident was particularly dramatic, MNA said it was not uncommon for nurses to be involved in accidents on the way home – due to extreme fatigue caused by long shifts, overtime sometimes obligatory and the lack of adequate help. (It is unknown what level of exhaustion this nurse was or her working conditions.)
Rebecca Furst knows everything about managing fatigue.
She recently retired after more than 40 years as a nurse, most recently at Newton-Wellesley Hospital.
“I really sympathize with the nurse and I can certainly understand how this happened,” Furst said. “I don’t think people realize how exhausting this job is.”
Furst said the public underestimates the physical and emotional toll that just doing their job takes on nurses: from moving heavy patients to the stress of life-saving procedures to dealing with death.
“I mean, I came home after working at night with the window open, slapping my face to keep myself awake,” Furst said.
Nurses make up the majority of the American health care team. But recent studies clearly show that working conditions have an impact on these figures.
In fact, the American College of Nursing recently reported that a quarter of registered nurses plan to leave the profession, in one way or another, within the next five years.
Mass. Gen. Brigham said they were investigating the incident – but could not confirm that the injured party was an employee, much less a nurse.
Furst said the incident is a warning that some things in nursing need to change.
“It was a 22-mile commute 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 a different way.
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