Travel nurses say the current healthcare system is 'unsustainable' as COVID-19 infections surge again. Some say the pay is the only thing keeping them on the front lines.

• Front-line workers have been dealing with wave after wave of COVID-19 cases for almost two years.
• The pandemic has created a demand for travel nurses as hospitals struggle with staff shortages.

Travel nurses have been in high demand as hospitals across the country deal with surge after surge of COVID-19 and struggle with staffing shortages, but some nurses say the current healthcare system is "unsustainable."

As a means to deal with staff shortages, hospitals are enticing travel nurses with high-paying contracts. In some areas, travel nurses are making more than doctors.

"The hospital that I'm working in right now was so short staffed and so critically overwhelmed that I am making more money than the surgeons," Tayler Oakes, a travel nurse, told Insider.

But Oakes said the system is unsustainable. She told Insider that while she loves to take care of patients, she's burned out, and the only thing keeping her in her bedside role is the pay.

"I think the money, this is keeping a lot of us in the industry, which is also super concerning because that's not sustainable at all," she said.

The compensation has pushed some nurses to leave their staff positions to follow the money into the travel-nurse industry, Taylor Dilick, a travel nurse in South Carolina, told Insider. She said the lack of adequate pay for staff nurses, alongside working conditions, led to "a mass exodus" of staff nurses who took on more lucrative travel positions.

Oakes said some of the issues plaguing the industry were ongoing before the pandemic hit almost two years ago, but the surges of COVID-19 cases have just exacerbated them.

"I don't ever see myself not being a nurse, but I don't know how long a body can sustain the work that we do at the bedside for 12 hours a day," she said. "How long your emotional and mental health can maintain seeing people die all the time from preventable things."

She added: "I think people just don't understand what healthcare workers see. Like, I mean, imagine seeing people die all day, every day, and you're supposed to clock out and go to dinner."

Nurses previously told Insider that, as officials warn of an uptick in hospitalizations due to the Omicron variant's spread across the country, they feel as if they're living in the movie "Groundhog Day."

While many were optimistic with the rollout of vaccines last year that cases would decline and the strain on the healthcare system would subside, they have instead found themselves in what feels like a never-ending loop.

The pandemic has made many nurses consider leaving the profession. A Trusted Health online survey conducted in March of over 1,000 travel nurses found that 67% said they did not think the healthcare system was prioritizing nurses' mental health and well-being.

Additionally, out of the 46% of respondents who said they felt less committed to nursing, almost half said they were considering leaving the profession, and 25% said they were looking for a job outside of nursing or planning to retire.

Nikki Motta, another travel nurse, told Insider that she has more work on her plate with fewer nurses available and more demand for them. While she might have only one to three patients she's personally taking care of, she said she would often have to help out other nurses who have just graduated or are not specifically trained to treat COVID-19 patients.

That adds to the mental and physical exhaustion she feels, she said. Motta previously told Insider that she's considering leaving bedside care because of the stress.

"I think that healthcare systems need to realize that nurses are valuable and that they're an integral part of healthcare systems and they wouldn't run without them," Motta said.