New national nurses union forms - Page 20

Legislative Purpose

To address the nationwide shortage of hospital direct-care registered nurses; provide minimum safe patient protection standards — such as safe staffing ratios — for short-term and long-term acute-care hospitals in the United States; protect direct care registered nurse as patient advocate, create registered nurse education grants, and living stipends to recruit and retain direct-care registered nurses.

To create a hospital nursing service environment that will immediately attract new RNs and provide the foundation for ultimate restoration of the hospital direct RN workforce; and

To establish clearly defined, legally protected and enforceable duties and rights to direct-care registered nurses as advocates exclusively for the interests of patients.
Whistleblower protections that encourage patients, RNs and other healthcare workers to notify government and private accreditation entities of suspected unsafe patient conditions that will greatly enhance the health, welfare, and safety of patients.

The essential principles of staffing in the acute-care hospital settings must be based on patient’s individual acuity and needs; severity of conditions; services needed; and complexity surrounding those services.

freedom of speech?
although the constitution of the us guarantees that “congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech”, allnurses.com is not congress. freedom of speech rights do not extend to this privately owned website. the tos/guidelines of this website governs the behaviors and activities of the members. if you choose not to follow the guidelines agreed to during registration, the result is a disabling of your account.

debates
we promote the idea of lively debate. this means you are free to disagree with anyone on any type of subject matter as long as your criticism is constructive and polite.

personal attacks
our first priority is to the members that have come here because of the flame-free atmosphere we provide. there is a zero-tolerance policy here against personal attacks. we will not tolerate anyone insulting another individual's opinion nor name calling and will ban repeat offenders.

how to handle personal attacks or objectionable material
if you are ever in a position where you feel you have been personally attacked, do not respond to that attack. please report the post using red triangle at the top of each post, you can submit your comments of why you are reporting the post. the staff will be notified with your comments for that specific, this is the most efficient way to report post. let the staff deal with the problem, if you respond to that attack, you may find yourself removed as well, and we don't want to see that happen.

considering the real-time nature of this bulletin board, it is impossible for us to review all messages or confirm the validity of information posted. please remember that we do not actively monitor the contents of posted messages and are not responsible for any messages posted. we do not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message, and are not responsible for the contents of any message. the messages express the views of the author of the message, not necessarily the views of this forum or any entity associated with this forum. any user who feels that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to contact us immediately using the report button. we have the ability to remove objectionable messages and we will make every effort to do so, within a reasonable time frame, if we determine that removal is necessary. this is a manual process, however, so please realize that we may not be able to remove or edit particular messages immediately.

we are the largest nursing discussion forum on the internet. we are dealing with 250,000+ of members with an average of 1600 posts per day. when you grow to a bulletin board of this size, it becomes more difficult to moderate it. presently, we have 20+ volunteer moderator and admin staff who monitor this board periodically throughout the day. they are here to help -- please feel free to contact them with any problems you may have. on the other hand, they have been instructed to enforce our zero-tolerance policy. our biggest concern here is the quality of membership not the quantity. we have no problem removing any individual who disrupts this bulletin board.

I'm just wondering if there is any direct care RN left out there who might be unsure about the benefits of belonging to the largest all RN union and professional association in the country? The formation of National Nurses United is really positive and significant news for the profession of nursing and the patients we serve. NNU was founded by RN organizations throughout the country who want to pursue to pursue a more powerful agenda of collective patient advocacy that promotes the interests of patients, direct care nurses, and RN professional practice.

Of course we advocate for our patients everyday at the bedside, but in these times it's really important that our strong, collective and unified voice as advocates is heard in the state and federal legislatures. Together we will be working to secure passage of state and national legislation for RN staffing ratios and other basic protections for RNs and patients, and meaningful healthcare reform based on a single excellent standard of care for all. Also we will stand united to expose and block hospital industry efforts to undermine RN professional practice in legislatures, regulatory agencies, boards of nursing and at the bedside.

In a nutshell that means we're fighting for "RATIOS, RIGHTS, AND REPRESENTATION". It's not a dream, it's legislation that was introduced last May by Senator Barbara Boxer: S1031 "The National Nursing Shortage Reform and Patient Advocacy Act". Nurses can read all about it here.
It's a beautiful thing, and it's about time!

Direct care RN here who is fairly well convinced that the national union, is not a very good idea. Since any rational discussion which is anti-union will be edited or deleted, that is all I have to say.