American Association of Registered Nurses
Leaders of organizations representing some 70,000 Registered Nurses and other allied professionals this week took a major step forward in creating new national nurses' organization. Meeting in San Diego, the group adopted a name -the American Association of Registered Nurses (AARN) - targeted several priorities for legislative and workplace changes, and hired a national advocate to press for legislative gains in Congress.
Participants in the AARN include the California Nurses Association, Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), Maine State Nurses Association (MSNA), Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, and United Health Care Workers of Missouri. Additional nurses groups from New York and Arizona were informal participants in the San Diego meeting. Together the groups include several of the largest and leading nurse and patient advocacy organizations in the US.
"AARN was created by and for direct care RNs," said CNA President Kay McVay, RN, "to address the issues facing patients and their families - safe RN-to-patient staffing being the primary concern."
"Nurses in this country need a voice for those fighting on the front lines, a voice that is not afraid to take on the health care industry as it continues to promote policies and practices that endanger patients and harm nurses," said MNA President Karen Higgins, RN.
AARN members will work together on a series of national projects as well as assisting each other in state legislative, collective bargaining, and organizing campaigns to improve registered nurse staffing conditions and to promote the health and safety of nurses. On the national scene, the member groups have already sponsored a federal bill to prohibit the dangerous practice of mandatory overtime in hospitals, and hired a Washington-based public interest advocate to promote national legislation.
Additionally, the organizations held an organizing institute in California last year to help train nurse activists on union representation campaigns. A second organizing institute will be held later this year in Philadelphia.
"AARN will be the voice in America for bedside nurses to bring their issues to the forefront," noted PASNAP President Teri Evans, RN. "Improvement for our patients is essential."
"Nurses have long needed a strong voice to protect our practice and our ability to give safe patient care. That voice is the AARN," added Nancy Ford, RN, of the MSNA.
On a state to state level, the groups are already working together.
Nurses from all the member groups attended a massive rally in California last September in support of implementation of California's groundbreaking law establishing minimum nurse-to-patient ratios. The ratios, announced by Governor Gray Davis last week, are the first in the nation, and widely seen as a cure for the nursing shortage and eroding patient care conditions.
The ratios are required by a CNA sponsored law. Other states are also hoping to use those ratios as a model for safe staffing in their states. The MNA has cited the California law as an inspiration for similar legislation it is pursuing in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts, like California, has faced dramatic changes in health care delivery with the advent of managed care and deregulation. After a decade of health care industry decisions to eliminate nurses, or to replace nurses with lesser qualified, unlicensed personnel, nurses have left the bedside by the thousands because they were no longer able to deliver appropriate care under the repressive conditions created by the industry. In Massachusetts, with the highest number of nurses per capita in the country, the state finds itself in a major nursing shortage with vacancies unfilled for months in spite of industry attempts to woo nurses with large bonuses.
"Without the commitment to a safe nurse to patient ratio, nurses are unwilling to put their professional practice license and their patients' safety on the line. With California's new law as a model, we hope to convince our legislature to adopt our own measure in the Commonwealth as the best means of addressing our nursing shortage, as well as to protect patients, " Higgins explained.
AARN members have also worked with the UHCW on a representation campaign currently underway in St. Louis. Several of the states are working on state legislation, similar to the national bill, to prohibit the dangerous practice of mandatory overtime. The member groups are also cooperating on promoting efforts, such as is currently underway in Maine, to adopt a universal health coverage system.
The groups will also work together in patient advocacy forums. In San Diego, the AARN formally endorsed Stop Patient Abuse Now, a national coalition started by the Gray Panthers that challenges pharmaceutical price gouging.
Seventieth Annual Meeting of MNA District 5
Directions to Florian Hall
Nurses in the News!
Today's (February 7, 2002) front-page story in the Globe once again shines a light on the importance of nurses, the issue of nurse staffing, the nursing shortage and what nurses are doing to address this situation. The MNA is proud of the fact that the Globe chose to focus on one of our unionized hospitals (New England Medical Center), which has given its nurses significant and much deserved salary increases. What's more important than the salary hike, however, is the issue of staffing at this facility. See the underlined paragraph in the story below and you will notice that NEMC not only pays nurses what they are worth, but they provide a nurse to patient ratio of 1 nurse to 4 patients on a typical hospital floor. If every hospital had this level of staffing, there never would have been a nursing shortage, and if they instituted such staffing now, the shortage would soon end. The fact is, most hospitals in the Commonwealth have very poor nurse staffing, which has driven nurses away from the bedside, and endangered patients.
That is why the MNA along with the Massachusetts Senior Action Council and others are supporting HB 1186, a Safe Staffing/Safe Patient Care Bill that would replicate what has happened in California and regulate nurse to patient ratios for all hospitals, for all nurses and for all patients. For information on this legislation and how you can help support its passage, visit the MNA web site at <http://www.massnurses.org>.
As their numbers shrink, nurses gain clout
<http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/038/nation/As_their_numbers_shrink_nurses_gain_clout+.shtml>
Anne Barnard, Boston Globe, February 7, 2002
Think of nurses these days, and the image that comes to mind is as likely to be a frazzled worker with a picket sign as a calm comforter in white.
But in recent weeks, a different picture has begun to emerge. From coast to coast, there are signs that the turmoil in nursing and its attendant publicity have brought nurses a hard-won victory. With hospitals desperate to hire them and politicians eager to embrace their concerns about medical errors and emergency-room delays, nurses are now the most sought-after workers in the health care world, with new, and some say unprecedented, clout.
In Boston, Tufts-New England Medical Center has agreed to raise nurses' pay 18 to 23 percent over 21 months, a deal the nurses union called the state's biggest raise in nearly two decades.
In California, Governor Gray Davis has announced the nation's first state-mandated nurse-to-patient ratios, tentatively set at 1 to 6 on regular hospital floors and 1 to 1 for trauma and intensive-care patients.
With 10 percent of the nation's nursing jobs empty and one in seven hospitals reporting a nursing vacancy rate of 20 percent, 41 percent of hospitals are paying signing bonuses: $5,000 is common, $10,000 not unheard of.
Even at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which announced 700 layoffs last month to offset a $58 million operating loss last year, executives went against consultants' advice and vowed not to fire a single bedside nurse.
''Finally, some hospitals are starting to realize that your survival depends on having the nurses to staff those beds when the ER patients come in,'' said Karen Higgins, a nurse at Boston Medical Center who is president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, the state's largest nurses union.
Over the last year, unions and other groups have warned that nurses are increasingly overworked, caring for too many patients, and afraid that their exhaustion will lead to a lethal mistake.
Given this grim picture, Kate Matulewicz, 26, seems to live in an alternative universe. At Tufts-New England Medical Center, she cares for three or four cardiology patients a day, few enough that she has time to laugh at their jokes about her red hair and to teach them how to take better care of themselves at home. She never has to work overtime against her will, and she beams with pride about the research project she recently worked on.
''I'd say I'm happy with both the pay and the benefits,'' she said Friday, as she whisked from room to room changing bandages and testing blood pressure.
One patient, William Charbonnier, said he ran a home-nursing agency in St. Croix until last year, when congestive heart failure forced him to move back to Boston. He said the medical center seemed to have learned the same lesson he did: ''You need to pay them right and treat them right, or you're not going to keep them.''
Shelley Reever, who negotiated the hospital's new contract for the union, said she expects that message to spread.
''The nursing shortage is predicted to be so severe, nurses are going to be in a position to have a huge amount of say over their working conditions,'' Reever said. ''We're not there yet, but I just see this as a very different time. The Legislature, the state, the federal government, everyone is finally starting to listen.''
And so is the marketplace. Newly hired nurses increasingly can choose their hours. Some hospitals are giving nurse executives more leeway and more money to make changes that nurses want, from creating new awards to reducing mandatory overtime.
''The workplace is becoming more attractive,'' said Barbara Monroe, dean of the Boston College School of Nursing.
Word of mouth from disgruntled nurses and new opportunities for women have dampened interest in the profession in recent years, Monroe said.
But in September, nursing-school enrollment rose 3.7 percent, ending a six-year slide, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.
At Northeastern University, applications to the nursing program are up 70 percent over last year. Enrollment is expected to rise further, partly because of the sluggish economy. Recessions typically lure people into nursing, as the profession's comparative stability becomes a selling point and as higher salaries in other fields lose some of their edge.
But the workplace stresses are far from over, and nurses' recent gains won't solve all the problems.
There are still roughly 21,000 fewer students than in 1995, not enough to meet the demand for new nurses or stave off a projected shortage of 500,000 registered nurses by 2020.
And there are limits to how fast the nursing schools can grow: BC's School of Nursing saw a 40 percent increase in applications this year, but the number of students who enter next fall will increase by just 10 percent, Monroe said, because there is not enough faculty to handle more.
Meanwhile, some health care executives fear that too much power for nurses - and particularly for nurses' unions - could weaken hospitals financially and thereby harm patients.
Dr. Samuel O. Thier, chief executive of the Partners HealthCare network, called the New England Medical Center contract ''precedent-breaking.'' He said the deal would add to the pressures on Massachusetts hospitals, already struggling with Medicaid reimbursement rates that pay just 70 cents on the dollar.
In California, hospitals are warning that the proposed nurse-to-patient ratios could be counterproductive. The California Healthcare Association, an industry group, says that the proposed ratios will cost hospitals an additional $400 million a year, when 64 percent of hospitals in the state are losing money.
Hospitals may have to close some beds if they cannot find the staff required to operate them under the mandate, said Jan Emerson, a spokeswoman for the group, which represents California's more than 500 hospitals.
A similar ratio bill is being debated in the Massachusetts Legislature. Proponents cite studies showing that care improves when there are more nurses per patient; critics say that those studies are inconclusive and that state-mandated ratios rob hospitals of the flexibility they need.
Nevertheless, there is a broad consensus among health care executives and politicians that nurses, the most numerous employees in the troubled health-care system, need a boost. Hospitals and unions alike are thrilled that Congress and state legislatures are setting aside money for nurse training.
In Boston, hospitals more used to vying over whose doctors are best now compete for the title of most nurse-friendly.
Massachusetts General Hospital, which has long been better known for its cutting-edge medicine than its warmth, has made nursing a priority under Jeanette Ives Erickson, its senior vice president for patient care and chief nurse. MGH also poached top nurse managers last year from its financially struggling rival, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in a bid to steal its title as Boston's premier nursing institution.
Meanwhile, Paul Levy, the new chief executive at Beth Israel Deaconess, said that protecting nurses was key to the hospital's survival, even if it costs more in the short term. ''The place that this hospital has in the community is based on a level of warmth and care that is fundamentally in the hands of the nurses,'' Levy said.
Emerson Hospital has set aside more time for training and provided refresher courses for nurses returning to work.
''For years, we just accepted the fact that we had more and more and more patients and there were less of us, and it was getting more dangerous,'' said Higgins of the Massachusetts Nurses Association. ''Finally, nurses are coming out freely and saying, `It isn't safe.' Nurses probably always had clout. They just never used it.''
Anne Barnard can be reached by e-mail at abarnard@globe.com.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company
Nurse says safety complaints led to firing
Paul Leighton, The Salem Evening News, February 01, 2002
SALEM -- The head of the nurses' union at Salem Hospital said she was fired last month because she has complained to state and national agencies about safety and staffing at the hospital.
Fran O'Connell, a registered nurse who has worked at Salem Hospital for 30 years, said management told her she was fired because she abandoned a patient.
But O'Connell said that charge is false. The real reason for her firing, she said, is her outspokenness about what she says is a shortage of nurses at the hospital and her concern for patients' safety.
"It's because I'm a union president and I've been making a lot of noise," said O'Connell, a 50-year-old Beverly resident.
Salem Hospital refused to comment specifically on O'Connell's firing. Hospital officials released a statement that said in part, "Since the matter is currently under review, it would be inappropriate to comment on the reasons for termination at this time, except to say that it is completely unrelated to any union activity."
O'Connell said hospital management wanted to get rid of her because she and the nurses' union have complained to the national Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations and the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health about nurse staffing levels and mandatory overtime.
Nurses on the night shift are caring for as many as 10 patients at a time, O'Connell said. Nurses are forced to work overtime to cover for the shortage on some shifts, and nurses worn out from long hours are more prone to make mistakes, she said.
O'Connell said one nurse, a recent nursing school graduate, was forced to work a 16-hour shift. On her drive home she fell asleep and crashed head-on into a truck and suffered minor injuries, O'Connell said. Another new nurse worked 20 straight hours when her supervisor lost track of her, O'Connell said.
O'Connell said she has 300 documented cases of nurses being forced to work overtime last year. There are approximately 475 registered nurses in the union at Salem Hospital.
Bea Thibedeau, executive director of Salem Hospital, said mandatory overtime is a problem throughout the health care industry due to a nursing shortage. But, she said, mandatory overtime represented only one-half of 1 percent of all the nurses' hours worked last year at Salem Hospital.
"We've made every effort to try to minimize that and we continue to work on that issue," Thibedeau said. "We make every effort to provide a high level of service to our patients without excessive overtime."
OHSU Nurses Fight for Future of Nursing
<http://www.oregonrn.org/sheridanart.php>
Kathleen Sheridan, RN, MPA, Labor Relations Representative, Oregon Nurses Association
Never a braver group has graced the sidewalks of Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). Since May 23, 2001, the Association of University Registered Nurses (AURN), the collective bargaining unit of ONA nurses at OHSU, has negotiated with their employer for better wages, a health insurance premium plan that will not leave them bankrupt and a practice environment that will attract and retain nurses.
On Dec. 17, 2001, 1,400 OHSU nurses walked off the job to prove to management how important these issues are. As of press time, approximately 1,300 nurses are still on strike, pressuring management to come to the table with an offer that shows the nurses they are being heard.
From the first day of negotiations, OHSU management has tried to make this struggle about ³competitive wages,² i.e., wages that fall somewhere in the ballpark of nurse wages in the Portland metro area. They have spent thousands of dollars in advertising and enlisted the help of the local media in focusing the public¹s attention on how their generous offers would bring the OHSU nurses up to a mythical ³metro area average.²
©1998-2002 Oregon Nurses Association, All Rights Reserved.
A Tentative Agreement has been reached with OHSU Management!
OHSU, nurses reach a deal
<http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/front_page/101308655132024135.xml>
Joe Rojas-Burke & Wendy Y. Lawton, The Oregonian, February 7, 2002
It's taken 52 days.
It's pitted caregiver against caregiver.
It's consumed untold millions of dollars.
But the strike by nurses at Oregon Health & Science University has a foreseeable end under a tentative settlement reached with the union leaders before dawn Wednesday after 33 hours of hard-fought bargaining that began Monday.
The lasting impact is far from clear.
The bitter, lingering strike has left nurses struggling to regain their financial footing and spurred others to quit OHSU for permanent jobs elsewhere; the union and the employer have yet to count how many. Lost business and strike-related spending by OHSU -- including premium pay and housing for hundreds of replacement nurses -- has depleted cash reserves; OHSU officials have declined to specify how much.
But on Wednesday, sleep-deprived representatives of both sides promised to work together. They claimed victory in the proposed settlement, which awaits ratification by a majority of union members Sunday. If nurses approve the plan, as expected, they would resume work Wednesday. Until then, union leaders are encouraging nurses to keep picketing.
"This is a good offer," said OHSU spokesman Jim Newman. "The union is backing it, and we're really happy about that."
"We did it," registered nurse Dominga Lopez, weary from all-night mediation, stammered in a recorded telephone message to union members.
The 1,500 registered nurses at OHSU stand to gain two annual pay raises of 7 percent, up from the 6 percent annual raises OHSU had been offering. In the third year of the proposal, nurses would receive at least a 6.5 percent pay increase. Nurses and the university also agreed to changes in health plan coverage, tuition and incentive pay for overtime.
Managers of the state's busiest medical center would gain an extra year before having to negotiate the next contract. And they would avoid an escalating, multimillion-dollar commitment sought by nurses to shield them from rapidly rising health insurance costs.
Still, both sides face enormous tasks.
Under the proposal, OHSU and the nurses must devise a more affordable health plan by summer of 2003 -- or face renewed union negotiations. To pull off the plan, the medical center will have to overcome the tide of rising medical costs, a trend that has stymied employers nationwide.
To attract and retain nurses, managers and the union have agreed to seek ways to improve working conditions -- including a commitment to gain accreditation for nursing excellence from the American Nurses Association. But nurses and managers must overcome the undertow of a worsening nationwide shortage of registered nurses.
The medical center and its nurses must accomplish these and other goals in a faltering economy and while state and federal governments threaten to slash spending on hospital services, such as caring for the uninsured. Leaders of both sides were unavailable to comment on additional specifics of achieving those goals.
The two sides had haggled over a contract since May, and the agreement expired Sept. 30. About 1,300 of the 1,500 union members walked out Dec. 17 in OHSU's first strike by registered nurses, and the first in Oregon since 1990.
The strike temporarily forced OHSU to close units and cancel nonurgent surgeries. OHSU officials said they spent close to an extra $500,000 a week on replacement nurses and other strike-related costs. Despite the outside staffing, the average daily number of inpatients fell to 290 in December, down from 318 in the same month a year earlier. The average daily patient load climbed to 295 last month, compared with an average of 325 in January of last year.
Many nurses, meanwhile, lost paychecks and drained savings accounts. Their health insurance expired at the end of January.
Brenda Leonard, a labor and delivery nurse and member of the union bargaining team, expects nurses to approve the contract. So does neonatal nurse Dana Welty, who spent the afternoon making and fielding calls from colleagues.
But she said nurses had mixed feelings about the wage increases and changes to health benefits. Just about everyone, she said, said the strike opened their eyes to job possibilities in hospitals, clinics and other health care settings.
"A lot of people are saying that they'll be going back with one foot in the door and one foot out the door," Welty said.
"People realize they don't have to keep working at OHSU."
Sandie Brown is one of those nurses. The 22-year veteran from Vancouver, Wash., loves nursing -- but has bitter feelings toward the university. Too many harsh words were said, and she and her family felt a lot of financial pain. Brown refinanced her Jeep Wrangler to get cash and borrowed money from friends.
"I'll vote on this to end the strike," she said. "And I'll go back to work. But I don't know if I'll stay."
Shawn Schmelzer, a striking nurse who's worked at OHSU for seven years in the trauma/neurosurgical intensive care unit, called the deal "a good enough compromise." Schmelzer said the strike was worth the trouble to get their message across to the university.
"They treat us as if it doesn't matter who takes care of the patient," she said. "It was important to let the public know that nurses, who matter so much to patient care, are so distressed."
You can reach Joe Rojas-Burke at 503-412-7073 or by e-mail at joerojas@news.oregonian.com.
You can reach Wendy Lawton at 503-294-5019 or at wendylawton@news.oregonian.com.
© 2002 OregonLive.com. All Rights Reserved.
Nurses, hospital close to deal in strike negotiations
Anna Demian, The Times of Smithtown, Saint James and Nesconset, February 6, 2002
Progress is being made in negotiations between St. Catherine of Siena Medical Center and the 475 registered nurses currently on strike from the hospital, according to sources from both sides.
Hospital spokesman, Andy Kraus said, ³Significant progress has been made in reaching a contract.²
However, nurses continue to strike over the issue of mandatory overtime.
The nurses have been on strike since November 26, 2001. They are asking for the elimination of mandatory overtime, the addition of staffing guidelines to their contract, the guarantee that flextime ‹ the option to work three, 12-hour days instead of five, eight-hour days ‹ will not be eliminated and the option to switch to a better health plan offered by the New York State Nurses¹ Association (NYSNA) to which all the striking nurses belong.
The hospital has said that it is administration¹s job to adequately staff the hospital and that fulfilling all of the nurses¹ demands would impede that ability. In addition, hospital officials said the cost of switching to the NYSNA health plan would be prohibitive.
³There have been over 90 hours of negotiations over the long weekend,² said Mark Genovese, a spokesman for NYSNA, indicating that the sides are close to agreement on issues of staffing guidelines, health coverage and flextime, but he added, ³forced overtime is the sticker.²
Nurses claim that it is common hospital practice to force nurses to work two shifts in a row, a total of 16 hours, and that this practice is dangerous to patients as it results in exhausted nurses being on the floor.
Hospital officials have said that mandatory overtime actually accounts for a small percentage of all nurses¹ hours and that it is a necessary tool for maintaining staffing levels.
Of late, the nurses have tried a number of different methods to get the word out about their cause. On January 28 and February 4 the nurses picketed outside of Catholic Health Services¹ (CHS) headquarters in Melville and the plan to do so again on the February 8. They had plans to picket the Rockville Centre Diocese but cancelled due to the death of Bishop John McGann.
According to Kraus, the hospital will not change the way they are handling the situation just because nurses change their picket location.
³We are still negotiating and that¹s the important thing,² said Kraus.
Saint Catherine of Siena Medical Center Strike
<http://www.nysna.org/NEWS/current/stcath.htm>
Unemployed, activists protest lack of aid in surviving recession
In an expansive display of solidarity, flight attendants and factory workers, the unemployed and the underemployed, activists and active retirees gathered downtown yesterday afternoon to demand justice for those struggling to survive the economic downturn.
Hundreds of people filled Faneuil Hall to hear Massachusetts residents from all walks of life tell stories of how state budget cuts, corporate decisions, and the recession have adversely affected their lives.
''It's very appropriate in these sad economic times that we come together,'' said Elaine Bernard, one of the moderators of the event. Bernard, who directs the Harvard Trade Union Program, encouraged the crowd to ''ask not how we can serve the economy, but how the economy can serve us.''
Other speakers included Karl Farmer, chairman of the Polaroid Retiree Association, who expressed disgust at what he called the bankrupt company's failure to provide for its retired and laid-off workers. Corporate officers at Polaroid, he said, received hefty severance packages.
''It's time to put big holes in their golden parachutes,'' he said.
Ken Ramsey, president of the department of transitional assistance chapter of SEIU Local 509, spoke about what he characterized as the state's general failure to provide adequate aid to impoverished residents.
''I want to know why you're putting up condos on Tremont Street when there are people starving to death on the street,'' he said to sustained applause.
Jobs with Justice, a group that advocates for the rights of working-class people, sponsored the rally in an effort to forge unity among different sectors of the Bay State work force and civic leaders.
''We are giving voices to different people and letting them listen to each other,'' said Jobs with Justice director Russ Davis. ''We hope to somehow change the political climate here in Massachusetts.''
Among the government officials at the event was Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner. He denounced ''corporate fat cats,'' saying they are a ''danger to this country.''
The rally was timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum in New York City. Jobs with Justice, in conjunction with the AFL-CIO, has organized demonstrations in New York to protest what they view as unjust labor practices on the part of many of the forum's corporate attendees.
Jobs for Justice is also helping distribute a documentary chronicling the three-week sit-in by Harvard students and university employees to gain better benefits for workers. The film was shown last night at the Harvard Film Archive.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company
Huge Turnout Expected Monday's Department of
Public Health Hearing on Waltham Hospital Closing
If this hospital closes, more than 60,000 residents of Waltham will see their health care safety net disappear. Surrounding communities will see their own hospitals' care rapidly deteriorate, and yes, people will die as a result. We hope the media will cover this important hearing, and we hope citizens who believe in the vital role played by our community hospitals will attend this hearing to demonstrate the need to protect this vital resource!
WHAT: Thousands of citizens from the Community of Waltham and Waltham Hospital will voice their opposition to the planned closing of the hospital at The Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Division of Health Care Quality, public Hearing concerning: