Montana Annual Book of Reports 2017

2017 Montana Nurses Association
MNA Highlights from the Executive Director
Vicky Byrd, BA, RN, OCN
Excerpts from our 2016-2017 MNA Government Relations Platform
addressing violence:
Protect the economic and general welfare of nurses by:
a. actively engaging in legislation and campaigns that positively
contribute to the economic and general welfare of RNs;
b. ensuring the right of RNs to engage in collective bargaining in
Montana;
c. opposing any “Right to Work” legislation now being referred to as
“NO RIGHTS AT WORK” by MNA
d. addressing workplace environment issues including violence against healthcare workers,
appropriate staffing, patient safety; and
e. advocating legislation prohibiting mandatory overtime.
The “Your Nurse Wears Combat Boots” campaign launched at the 2015 MNA convention and began with
the MNA board of directors deciding how to address violence in the workplace and ultimately produce
effective legislation. We had not been effective in past years, so we looked outside of the box and thought
a legislative campaign would be most effective and thus was born the Your Nurse Wears Combat Boots
campaign with the tagline of addressing workplace violence in the Healthcare setting. We knew from
the beginning this campaign would have to address education, legislation and a culture change. MNA
was fortunate to have a volunteer campaign chair, Brenda Donaldson RN, participate in all levels of this
campaign, from attending road shows, to calling her local lawmakers and even testifying during the 2017
legislation session.
We held seven road shows over a year and a half bringing education and our proposed legislation to our
nurses, lawmakers and to the public. The culture change needed was to inform healthcare workers that it’s
not part of our job to be assaulted while performing our professional duties. If convicted of assault against
a healthcare worker we wanted it to be a felony charge. We gathered assault and workplace violence
stories. We mailed these stories on postcards to the legislators sharing nurses and healthcare workers
stories of being assaulted while on duty. We included their pictures and city or county of residence so
lawmakers could see that these are real Montana workers being harmed every single day.
We partnered with the Department Of Labor and they were able to published a paper titled “Assaults on
Healthcare Workers in Montana”-prepared by Julia M. Brennan and Dave A. Elenbaas, November 30,
2016, Montana Department of Labor & Industry. This evidence based paper showed that in Montana,
healthcare workers are assaulted at a higher rate than the national average.
All lawmakers were fully informed and educated about the campaign. In addition to multiple emails and
handouts, we held an informational legislative reception for all our Montana senators and representatives
(150 potential lawmakers) including fellow nurses and firefighters. We showed a powerful video (viewable
online on our website) talking about violence in healthcare that our workers are experiencing and
approximately 40 lawmakers attended.
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