"'How Can Acute Care Recover from the Pandemic?'" (Conversations, March) takes me back to a conference I attended when I had far fewer letters after my name. The staff nurses asked the same questions as those raised in the article and got the same head-in-the-clouds answers from the nurse leaders on the platform. Do these people even remember coming off long shifts absolutely exhausted and looking forward only to attending to all their home responsibilities?

The solution is not putting in still more time for committee work. Talking to nurse leaders? In the hospitals where I worked, I didn't even know who they were-and they certainly expressed no interest in what I might think. My scope of influence? Zero. Nurse "leaders" need to advocate for staff nurses, not make their jobs harder.

Burden S. Lundgren, PhD, MPH, RN

Norfolk, VA