[fronkey bean]

Originally Posted by Atl_John

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.

Originally Posted by caroladybelle

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]

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%

[Jaded Med/Surg]

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."

[coralynwoodson]

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?

[coralynwoodson]

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]

Originally Posted by coralynwoodson

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.

[SKnox]

My father-in-law works as a computer programmer for a hospital group: he works on the payroll programs. The smallest hospital of the three is unionized, the other two are not. The union nurses had a paid lunch break every day, which the hospital wanted to get rid of. What did the offer in return? Matching up to 3% of the nurses 401K contributions. It took several YEARS before the union finally relented on that issue.

So who were the unions really looking out for in that scenario?

[coralynwoodson]

In addressing the unionized facility in Alabama; they did the nurses at that facility no good at all in my opinion. If a compromise were to made how come they did not see fit to have the facility match the nurses 401K dollar for dollar like many other agencies do? To give them 3% is like 3 cents to the dollar. Those nurses work hard and long and should be compensated by the people for whom they work. We work hard doing a balance and check on all of our documentation to make sure that we have painted the picture for how the patient has responded to our care. We listen to the patients when they need an ear to hear their woes. We attend to the ungrateful family member who think we have done a poor job at responding to their loved ones. We put up with co-workers who do not share in carrying the bucket filled with the weights of being a 24 hour nurse. No matter that you get off of work at 7am, 3pm or 11pm; you are a nurse 24 hours a day. At least that is what your license says. RN or LPN for the years....The union is a way of helping us make our voices heard around the country. We need nurses in the legislature who can state some of the concerns we have. Take it from me, many of the lay people, many of the legislatures do not realize what we as nurses endure on a workday. They don't realize that we have a thankless job. Yet we chose this profession because we love our work, we love people, we care. As we go to the polls to vote, maybe we should realize how important our voices are like teachers, lawyers, doctors, students,...we have voices too. I challenge those of you who are reading this thread to look up Alzheimers and find the web site that will direct you to some of the things we can do and how our voices can be heard in Washington regarding care of the Alzheimers' patient. Your will be astonished once you find it. In closing, if there are any nursing who are not carrying the load equally with your team, you should reconsider yourself as a nurse. Are you in this for the money? If yes, that is the wrong answer. Are you in this for the job title? That too, is the wrong answer. I challenge each nurse who is not doing what is expected of you to go back, read your oath, read you states criteria for nursing in that state, and lastly read the biography of Florence Nightingale and Mary Mahone. Then search within your inner being again and asked yourself...am I a whole nurse?

[coralynwoodson]

Originally Posted by coralynwoodson

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.

Jaded Med Surg a hospital which is now defunct here in Alabama some years ago had CNA's doing venipunctures. Some facilities have CNA's doing wound care. "If you lie with dogs, you'll get up with fleas". We must be careful that we do not let our profession be lowered by going for the cheapest means of delivering health care. Coralyn Woodson

[coralynwoodson]

Originally Posted by Snickett

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.

Stay here and fight the cause. You are needed in Alabama. Don't take your goods and give them to another.Coralyn Woodson