ROCHESTER, Minn. –A Mayo Clinic study shows nurses have suicidal thoughts more frequently than other workers and are “less likely to tell anyone about it.” The study involved 7,000 nurses with more than 400 reporting suicidal thoughts within the past year. That’s 5.5% of the respondents — nearly 1 percentage more than the general workforce. The chief researcher, Mayo internist Liselotte Dyrbye, noted that the data were gathered before the Covid pandemic. “We recognize the impact of the current pandemic has dramatically compounded the situation,” Dyrbye said. She called for system-level interventions to improve the work lives of nurses and other health care workers.
Dyrbye. Five percent of nurses have contemplated suicide.