The nurse told an officer with the Boston Police Department that after her shift ended, she went and had some pizza, then returned to the hospital to sleep in her car because she was on-call that night, accoridng to an incident report.
A Boston nurse is recovering after driving her car off the roof of a hospital parking garage, according to police.
The Boston Police Department is not identifying the woman but said in an incident report obtained by Inside Edition Digital that she had driven off the roof of a parking garage at Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital shortly after 1 a.m. on May 17.
In an interview with police after the crash, the nurse said she had finished her normal shift at 5:30 p.m., gone to get some dinner, and then returned to the hospital at 7 p.m. to sleep in her car because she was on call that night starting at 11 p.m., according to the report.
Shortly after 1 a.m., a light came on in the garage and the nurse says that she decided to move her car so she could have some time to rest, according to the report.
The nurse "stated that as she was moving the vehicle she accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake and went through the metal guard-rail and metal railing," said the report.
At this point, the nurse said her car began to teeter on the edge of the parking garage, and "she attempted to put the car in reverse but was unsuccessful and landed on the ground below," said the report.
Miraculously, she survived the fall, though she did suffer multiple broken bones and was admitted to the hospital in severe condition, according to Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Police obtained a search warrant to test the nurse's blood and a toxicology report came back negative for any substances or alcohol, according to the report
The incident comes at a time when many nurses are leaving the field because of exhaustion.
A 2022 survey of approximately 330,000 registered and/or licensed nurses by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSMN) published in the Journal of Nursing Regulation found that more than a quarter of those polled planned to leave the profession in the next five years. That is on top of the unknown number of nurses who left the field during and in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. A 2023 report also from the NCSBM found that 100,000 left the workplace during the pandemic and deduced from their data that 1 million nurses would quit the profession between 2022 and 2027.
