An ICU nurse is echoing what so many people working in hospitals feel today, exhaustion and devastation. During an interview on Rachel Maddow’s show Wednesday, Jen Sartin admitted she is about to leave her current position at Singing River Health in Ocean Springs, Mississippi where the critical care unit is stretched to capacity:

“I don’t have any strength left. Honestly, I’ve given so much, I can’t keep going. That’s why I decided to move to a different department because it’s affected me in ways that I never thought possible.”

Frustration over those who refuse to be vaccinated weighs heavily on Sartin:

“We have a solution by getting the vaccine, and wearing our masks, and doing what we need to do. Nurses are so tired. It’s getting to the point where we need help. We’ve been helping as much as we can, and we need help from, you know, our community. I respect everybody’s choice to get vaccinated or not, but it’s just going to continue to get worse… If it keeps going like this, it could get to the point where it hurts our kids. We already have kids on vents in different parts of the state. if, you know, we won’t be able to say that we did everything to protect our children. You know, the people that would take a bullet for their kid, it could be as easy as taking a shot.” 

Sartin said she has to leave the ICU in order to prioritize her own mental health:

“I can’t do this anymore. I’ve seen more death than I thought I’d see in my entire life. I’ve held more hands of patients in their last moments, when their families couldn’t be by their side. More than I ever thought would happen. I know this is the ICU, and people pass. It shouldn’t be to this level, though. When I chose to be an ICU nurse, I knew this is what I signed up for. But I don’t think anybody really realized that this was going to be part of the deal, that this was going to be this exhausting. In every way. it’s — it’s just heartbreaking, in every way. I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s overwhelming. And I just — I can’t. I can’t even really speak about it anymore. I’m so exhausted from the mental strain of the process of it. Just, it’s all you hear. It’s all you see. You know, it’s this whole debate about vaccines, then coming in here and you wake up every morning. You know that it’s just going to be the same devastation as the day before.”

We encourage you to watch the full interview above.