Thousands of nurses in Texas and Kansas walked off the job Tuesday for a one-day strike to demand better workplace safety. Nurses have denounced chronic understaffing at three Ascension hospitals in Wichita and Austin. It was the largest nurses’ strike in Texas and Kansas history. This is Natasha Gosek, a neonatal intensive care unit nurse who’s worked at Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin for 14 years.

Natasha Gosek: “I know a lot of co-workers and a lot of new nurses, their first thing to do when they get into their car after a 14-hour shift is they just cry and release all of the previous 14 hours, so that they can compose themselves to go home to their families and not carry that with them as best as they can, because they know that they’ve been called to this profession, they’ve been driven to this profession, to take care of babies, to take care of families, and they’re not able to do that.”