National NURSE

Recommendations

Info

NEWS BRIEFS NATIONAL Nearly 1,600 registered nurses at Washington Hospital Center, the largest hospital in the nation’s capital, have joined National Nurses United after a landslide 1121-66 vote which took place Oct. 3-5. RNs, who had previously been unionized through an independent union, said they sought power in greater numbers by banding with NNU’s 150,000 members, particularly as they face difficult contract negotiations and deteriorating working conditions under MedStar Health, the corporation that owns Washington Hospital Center. The facility is a Level One trauma center with a top-level neonatal intensive care unit and attracts patients from regions far outside of northwestern Washington, D.C., including West Virginia and Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. “We did this for the future of the bedside nurses here,” said Lori Marlowe, a cardiac RN, shop steward, and negotiating team member who works in a heart failure unit at Washington Hospital Center. “The hospital is making corporate decisions that have disrespected the nurses and patient care. We strongly felt that our voices were not being heard.” For example, last year nurses learned that flu vaccinations were mandatory for all employees, even though they had previously been voluntary. When we questioned the directive, we were told “this is a MedStar decision,” said Marlowe. First on Washington Hospital Center RNs’ plates after the vote is negotiating a fair contract. The nurses’ previous contract had expired in April and been extended several times, but they have been working without a contract since June 19. Management greatly antagonized the nurses when it unilaterally implemented its last and final offer—a proposal nurses say is unacceptable—just a few days before the vote. The RNs are forming their facility bargaining council and electing their negotiating committee, but report that several issues top their list of bargaining priorities. First is defeating the many takeaways the hospital has proposed. These include inferior healthcare benefit and pension plans, a cap on paid time off when nurses already have a hard time getting approval for vacations, discontinuing paid educational leave, and eliminating many of the pay differential incentives that RNs who work permanent nights or other shifts receive. “To me, it’s a big slap in the face to not honor [those differentials],” said Jean Keppler, an ER nurse and shop steward who has worked at Washington Hospital Center for 34 years. Keppler said if the hospital does away with differentials, her salary could drop by almost 25 percent. “This is a direct attack on the senior nurses.” Second, nurses want to give real input and help make decisions about patient care and safety issues. The acuity of patients at Washington Hospital is very high, report the RNs, but managers don’t seem to consider acuity when deciding staffing levels. “When we ask for more staff, they say, ‘I can’t give you what I don’t have. You have to go with what you’ve got,’” said Marlowe. “But we are the professionals. If we say we need an extra nurse, we need an extra nurse! We are questioned and judged because of the budget.” Washington, D.C. RNs Join NNU Marlowe said that RN-to-patient staffing ratios have steadily worsened. Several years ago, nurses on her unit typically cared for four patients, and the resource nurse had no assignments. Then the load increased to five patients on nights. Then gradually on other cardiac-like units some day shift RNs were assigned five patients. At first this happened only on a monthly basis, but then became a weekly occurrence. “Then five became the norm,” said Marlowe. “Guess what? Now we see six on the other cardiac-like units and resource can have anywhere from one to five patients.” To address these issues, RNs are eager to form a professional practice committee, an elected group of RNs who meet regularly to investigate patient care problems and work on solutions with management. At many facilities, the PPC is a powerful group of leaders who organize the RNs in creative ways to put pressure on administrators to fix patient safety issues. Since the vote, RNs say that coworkers are more enthusiastic about getting involved, whether it’s volunteering to be a shop steward or attending the next meeting. “The excitement is kind of infectious,” said Keppler. “I’m also excited that we’re now part of a union that’s not just a union, it’s a national movement.”—Staff report 4 NATIONAL NURSE WWW.NATIONALNURSESUNITED.ORG OCTOBER 2010
Children’s Hospital RNs Strike Over Healthcare Takeaways CALIFORNIA Registered nurse Angela Guevarra’s baby daughter can’t talk yet, but her message came through loud and clear. “Mommy’s healthcare is my healthcare too!” read Kennedy’s homemade pink and white bib as Guevarra walked her along the picket lines where she and nearly 800 of her coworkers at Children’s Hospital of Oakland protested while on a three-day strike Oct. 12 to 14. The deal breaker issue for the nurses during contract negotiations was healthcare benefit takeaways that for many would mean family insurance premium increases of up to $300 a month and loss of choice in provider that would prevent them from having their own children treated at the hospital where they work. Management is citing the recession for proposing that RNs on the PPO plan start paying, for the first time, 15 percent of the insurance premium. RN negotiators believe that the hospital is using economic woes as an excuse for opening the door to the ultimate goal of shifting more and more healthcare costs onto employees. They also point out that this plan would put Children’s RNs far below community benefit standards for RNs in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it harder for the hospital to retain and recruit experienced and talented nurses. As an alternative, the RNs offered to forgo wage increases this year, but the hospital continues to insist that they also accept the cuts in healthcare benefits. “We work in healthcare, we deserve healthcare,” said Aina Gagui, a medicalsurgical RN at Children’s who was dressed in a bright red Hello Kitty scrub top. While Gagui would not be immediately affected by the takeaway proposal since she is on the other Kaiser Permanente HMO plan, she said her cousin, who also works at the hospital, and her family would struggle with the additional costs. “For a family it would be $300 a month extra,” she said. “It’s really hard to afford that. And there’s no telling if they do this, what they will go after next.” The RNs are resolute about not accepting takeaways on health insurance just because workers in other industries have had takeaways forced upon them. While the nurses have been criticized in the media for being unwilling to pay part of the premiums like many other workers do, they point out that they are fighting for better healthcare for everyone—their communities, patients, as well as themselves—by taking such a stand. Furthermore, other area nurses are closely watching what happens with the Children’s RNs’ healthcare package because employers will follow suit when their contracts are up for renegotiation. “Our position is that we shouldn’t lower our standards, but that we should be bringing those standards up,” said Heather Brister, a surgical RN. One of the results of the healthcare takeaway nurses found most ironic was that they would no longer be able to bring their own children to the hospital for care without paying a portion out of pocket. “I’m about to start a family, and the way Children’s is trying to herd us all into the Kaiser plan is just wrong,” said Anna Smith, an ER nurse and a member of the negotiating committee. “I wouldn’t be able to bring my own children here.” Smith explained that nurses who can’t afford the 15 percent premium payment would switch to the Kaiser HMO plan, but that care could then only be delivered at Kaiser. As an ER nurse, she often sees parents with Kaiser insurance who bring injured kids to Children’s because of its reputation in pediatrics. But as soon as the kids are “technically stable, they put them in an ambulance and ship them off in the middle of their care. And that’s almost never the best thing to do,” Smith said. RNs said they were upset that Children’s Hospital wanted its nurses to pay for poor management decisions it made over the years. The hospital spent almost $9 million in compensation in 1998 for its top 26 administrators, including social club memberships and $560 million in severance packages for two short-term executives. The hospital also spent about $4 million on a failed and ill-conceived ballot measure from 2007 to 2008. In contrast, the hospital would save only about $1 million under the health benefit takeaway proposal. And nurses were disappointed that the hospital let contract negotiations escalate to a strike, further wasting resources on hiring replacement nurses and security personnel. The October strike was their first ever for many of the nurses marching outside the hos - pital. “The best thing about the strike is feeling like the community really supports us and how passionate all our coworkers are,” said Gagui. “The worst is worrying about our patients, knowing that the temp nurses in there are not as experienced as us.” —Staff report 0CTOBER 2010 WWW.NATIONALNURSESUNITED.ORG NATIONAL NURSE 5
Page 1 and 2: National OCTOBER 2010 NURSE THE VOI
Page 3: Contents 4 News Briefs Washington,
Page 7 and 8: The nurses used the event to take i
Page 9 and 10: Michigan Nurses Hold Convention, Un
Page 11 and 12: Rose Ann DeMoro Executive Director,
Page 13 and 14: This home study CE is part one of a
Page 15 and 16: care, doctor care, and hospital car
Page 17 and 18: design for testing cause and effect
Page 19 and 20: patients,” after he was given a p
Page 22 and 23: essentially requiring hospitals to
Page 24 and 25: Besides just being insulting and a
Page 26 and 27: Neither blizzards, unjustified disc
Page 28: Need CE Credits? Want to learn abou

National NURSE

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?