My mom was an ICU nurse for over 20 years, and yeah, the burnout is real. My mom always said that ICU is made up of a very small number of surgery recovery pati

My mom was an ICU nurse for over 20 years, and yeah, the burnout is real. My mom always said that ICU is made up of a very small number of surgery recovery patients (who quickly get moved to a different section once they're past the critical part of their recovery), and the rest is people who are just there to die (especially here in Florida, where there are a large number of elderly). She eventually had to switch to another position, because it became too much. She said she lost a lot of her empathy for the people who had spent 60-70 years abusing their bodies, and now were just here to slowly die under her care (regardless of how good that care was). She also hated that so many people were kept alive on machines long past the point of having any life left, just to keep the families happy. She said after a while, she could tell the difference... that whatever made a person a person (the soul or whatever you believe in) was gone, and all that was left was a pile of meat being kept "alive" by the machines.