Would you like nursing unions in Alabama?

fronkey bean · Oct 4, 2007

Really Snic., where do you work? We don't have that ratio in our ICU. Our stated ratio is 2 patients to one RN but P&P states we can have three under certain conditions, however,they will give us three under any conditions. We can not refuse a pt. b/c we are not staffed. Our med/surg is 6-8/1 and our step downs are 4-5/1. Some managers try to get better staffing ratios for their nurses butthey usually don't lastlong in management so the ones we have left are either apathetic or openly hostile to RN's wishes for better ratios.

Snickett · Oct 5, 2007

Wow, I didn't know the patients in Alabama were receiving less than quality care? Last year my father spent 3 weeks in Baptist Health South CVICU, and I assure you he received EXCELLENT care. I was recently a Pt at DCH Tuscaloosa, and I too received exceptional care. I work as a PCA at a large hospital with a 1 RN, 1/2 LPN, and 1 PCA per patient ratio on med-surge; 1-1-1/4-6 pts on step-down; and 1-0-1/1 or 2 pts in units.
We might talk funny down here, but we provide OUTSTANDING care and service to our patients - without unions thank you!

Sorry about the typo- wish it were 1-1 pt ratio; it is REALLY 1 RN; 1/2 LPN; 1 PCA for 8 med surge pts.......fingers are all thumbs sometimes, please forgive, but I still believe that the quality and quantity of care in Alabama is EXCELLENT without the need for unions.

fronkey bean · Oct 5, 2007

Sorry about the typo- wish it were 1-1 pt ratio; it is REALLY 1 RN; 1/2 LPN; 1 PCA for 8 med surge pts.......fingers are all thumbs sometimes, please forgive, but I still believe that the quality and quantity of care in Alabama is EXCELLENT without the need for unions.

That's still not that bad a ratio. here they split the pts up b/t the Rn's and LPN's. the LPN's take more pts but the RN's cover their IV meds, etc. and I think there is one tech per 10+ pts when they have techs.

Atl_John · Oct 6, 2007

Hey A J. I agree w/ totally except for one detail. I think admin. and management know for the most part what we want. They know that they can risk a few of us walking out b/c most won't and even if they have to pay agenct nurses for awile (and they have) it is still cheaper then an across the board raise for all nurses. As for the feeling towards unions that tends to be one held by the workers. Administration knows that if the unions come their paychecks will suffer b/c they will have to pay more. Until the attitude of nurses in the South changes about unions it will be hard to get one started. But, as younger nurses filter in and older nurses start travelling more, I think the tide will change and either we will unionize or pay will go up significantly.
Good to hear from you. Are you in clinicals at EAMC this semester?

Hey FB,

No I'm done with clinicals at EAMC, I'm doing my preceptorship and getting ready to graduate and hopefully move up to Bham. Start a MSN and work. On your point about administration, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. After spending two days with a manager up there, I was kind of amazed. They do not see the bigger picture at all. They are so closed off with the statistics from the employee survey they don't know at all what you want. For example, the pay rate, when I pointed out that only 36% of you I believe it was were happy with the pay, the answer was, well the national average is 34% so were doing good on that. All they cared about was the national average and if they were above it or not. What they dont' realize is that the reason they had to hire travel nurses is no one who can leave wants to stay and work at EAMC. I know of only 2 out of our class whos going to work at EAMC and it is ONLY by choice. One of them is starting an MSN to be a FNP asap so she doesn't have to work for the hospital. And the other is only here because she has a family and three kids all here.

Then going further and talking about benefits, you all weren't too happy with the cost of the benefits or health care or something along those lines so what do they do....they changed the rate but it still went up for RN's. Hrmmmm........???

Then the excuse of Nursing is a cost center came up. I tried to argue that they were not a cost center based upon Suzanne Gordon's arguments that without nurses you have no hospital. The doctor can admit patients all day but without a nurse to actually use their brain and take care of the patient you have no hospital. It fell on deaf ears they just see nurses as eating up profits.

However its still not as bad as Baptist South, holy cow, I'm doing my preceptorship there right now in the SICU....not impressed, not impressed at all.

I promise I'm not this negative all the time, just realy frustrated with nurses and their inability or their lack of being an advocate for themselves as much as they should be an advocate for their patients.

Bring on the unions I say, EAMC could certainly use one.

Atl_John · Oct 6, 2007

The excellent and kind nurses I work with attended Auburn.
I read the studies coming out of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. They've done important research that has helped my patients. I don't think I know nurses from there.
Anyway I hope the nurses of Alabama discuss ways to advocate for safe staffing so their patients can receive the quality of care they know how to provide.

Yeah Auburn's prepared me very well I believe. At first I wasn't so sure but I'm very happy with the education I've received. Their organization could be improved but thats a different story.

UAB is an excellent facility, I'm trying to get a MSN out of there. I"ll hopefully know here within the next month if I got in.

Staffing ratios dont' seem to be TOO horrible, but they could certainly improve. Alabama's a great place to live, I love it down here, but at times it would be nice if certain aspects could improve. I know this sounds like a union and itis, but I wish that each individual hospital's nurses would organize into their own union so to speak, and demand certain things like safe patient ratios M/S-4, ICU-1 to 2, so on and so on. But being that we are a rural area it can be hard to keep nurses here, if they paid at the same rate that Bham does I bet however they woudlnt' have much of a problem.

caroladybelle, BSN, RN · Oct 6, 2007

Check into any time unions have been proposed and I think you'll see stiff resistance in all cases. Also, the South just tends to be a very traditional area and anything that sounds like something new and liberal is looked on w/ a little suspicion. That is not altogether a bad thing, change is not always synonamous w/ progress, but it does mean that sometimes things move a little slow here.

Just because the South is resistant to unions does not mean that it is resistant to change. It merely means that they are resistant to unions.

Many of us believe in our independence and handle work issues without using an intermediary. And we don't see unions as "progress".

fronkey bean · Oct 6, 2007

Hey FB,
No I'm done with clinicals at EAMC, I'm doing my preceptorship and getting ready to graduate and hopefully move up to Bham. Start a MSN and work. On your point about administration, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. After spending two days with a manager up there, I was kind of amazed. They do not see the bigger picture at all. They are so closed off with the statistics from the employee survey they don't know at all what you want. For example, the pay rate, when I pointed out that only 36% of you I believe it was were happy with the pay, the answer was, well the national average is 34% so were doing good on that. All they cared about was the national average and if they were above it or not. What they dont' realize is that the reason they had to hire travel nurses is no one who can leave wants to stay and work at EAMC. I know of only 2 out of our class whos going to work at EAMC and it is ONLY by choice. One of them is starting an MSN to be a FNP asap so she doesn't have to work for the hospital. And the other is only here because she has a family and three kids all here.
Then going further and talking about benefits, you all weren't too happy with the cost of the benefits or health care or something along those lines so what do they do....they changed the rate but it still went up for RN's. Hrmmmm........???
Then the excuse of Nursing is a cost center came up. I tried to argue that they were not a cost center based upon Suzanne Gordon's arguments that without nurses you have no hospital. The doctor can admit patients all day but without a nurse to actually use their brain and take care of the patient you have no hospital. It fell on deaf ears they just see nurses as eating up profits.
However its still not as bad as Baptist South, holy cow, I'm doing my preceptorship there right now in the SICU....not impressed, not impressed at all.
I promise I'm not this negative all the time, just realy frustrated with nurses and their inability or their lack of being an advocate for themselves as much as they should be an advocate for their patients.
Bring on the unions I say, EAMC could certainly use one.

Good luck at UAB. I applied for the '08 CRNA class but I haven't heard back yet.

You may be right about the mgmt here which is kind of depressing. I always thought it was greed that made them turn a blind eye to us which meant whenever it got to the point that it would affect their profit enough they would make some changes. If it really is stupidity on their part then there is almost no hope that they will ever wise up to the dissatisfaction of the majority of the staff here.

Just because the South is resistant to unions does not mean that it is resistant to change. It merely means that they are resistant to unions.
Many of us believe in our independence and handle work issues without using an intermediary. And we don't see unions as "progress".

I used a generallization and, like all generalizations, there more than a few exceptions to the rule. I meant no offence, I love the south and would rather live here than just about any where in the US. Trust me, I am not thrilled w/ the idea of a union, I just don't see any other way to get what we want from management. If the admins where I work are really so clueless to the feelings of their employees, I just don't have any hope of them making any attempt to improve working conditions here.

Neuro101 · Feb 25, 2008

i would love to form a union. i have been thinking about it for several years. it is obvious that the nursing shortage is estimated to get worse in the years to come. the salary however, has not increased a whole lot. i have been a nurse 10 years and new nurses are only making a few dollars less than i am. working conditions are number one with me. i think we have to take care of too many patients. it is unsafe and these hospitals know it. they focus on patient satisfaction but they do not give us the resources to satisfy the patients and their families. it is dangerous. i do not know about anyone else but my license was not easy to get, but it could be easy to lose. i get tired of putting my license on the line because hospitals will not take the proper actions to make it a safer work environment. i've always worked with a lot of other nurses who have the attitude that "well, that is just the way it is and there is nothing we can do about it." my question to them is, would they do anything even if they could? evidently not. nursing union? yes, i am definetly for it. 100% :nurse:

Jaded Med/Surg · Mar 3, 2008

I don't care at this point. If it takes a union to change things, I'm all for it.

I won't give the name of the facility where I work ,for fear of blow back, but the conditions there are frightening. I fear for my license everytime I darken the door there. The biggest problem recently is nurse-patient ratio.

I'll give a specific example occuring only a few weeks ago.

I clock in ,as charge nurse mind you, to a floor with 24 patients with 3 nurses scheduled and 1 care assistant.

Note to those who work at better facilities: I, the "charge" nurse, am one of the three nurses.

That's eight patients per nurse. And these are not nursing home or mild acuity patients. Four of my patients were post surgical that day, two were total care -barely hanging on to life(I'm talking NGT's, TPN, Central Lines,etc), and last but not least TWO PEDIATRIC pts (one 7 day old and one 8 month old)!!!!!!!!!!

Need I say more..... and when management was questioned?????????

We were told it was because too many of us (Nurses) were laying out!

I pulled up the original schedule and guess what? That was the number originally scheduled. When questioned again? Their response was, "Well, we didn't know about that.":nono:

coralynwoodson · Mar 7, 2008

About 15-20 years ago, there was some talk about a Nursing Union in Alabama. There was allot of division among nurses about this in several counties. A nursing union would surely be welcomed by allot of nurses and not welcomed by others. The advantage of having a nursing union is for strength in legislative sessions. For instance, nurses could benefit from better retirement plans, more voices in the legislature, more voices in health education for students in the public, private and secondary arenas. Many of us are still viewed in subserviant roles. We are instead teachers, counselors, preachers, healers, friends, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, voters and contribute so much more to the community. We should be a voice in legislature when Medicare/Medicaid/Blue-Crosss Blue-Shield and other insurance conglomerates fail to understand that sometimes DRGs are not the main focus on someones health care but giving quality care should be first and foremost. We should be the first persons at the polls to vote and promote generalized healthcare for all people in this country. This would help us allot. Anyone have any ideas about what we could do if one day we were to unionize? :twocents:

coralynwoodson · Mar 7, 2008

Jaded Med/Surg. I somehow got dropped when I was threading on to your email. Anyway, what I was saying was that I feel you indeed. Everything you are saying is true about nursing jobs. Have you ever noticed that with all of the laying out from work comes the strong desire for monetary gain for everything that is done? I have met nurses who have heard call lights and said, 'thats not my patient'. Wrong answer. It is all of our patients. No wonder the hospitals don't want to pay what we feel we are worth. No wonder there is mention of unions for nurses. But if we don't stand together we will fall divided. And furthermore, we must make our profession work by working together as a group of people who collectively care for those who can not care for themselves. Watch out nurses! CNAs will be starting IV's and doing admission assessments if we aren't careful.

Snickett · Mar 9, 2008

We should be the first persons at the polls to vote and promote generalized healthcare for all people in this country. This would help us allot. Anyone have any ideas about what we could do if one day we were to unionize?

Yes, and we too cn have 25% unemployment like France, or drive to Canada for elective surgeries like organ transplants, or wait 8-12 weeks for a hospital bed like England........oh, yeah, since when was Medicaid and Medicare an "Insurance Conclomerate?"

As to what we could do if we were to unionize?.....I'd move to Florida.