Progressive nurses advocate for workers' rights and social justice. There's a myth out there being propagated by these union busters that the nursing profession achieved it's stature and garnered the public trust through the work of a few rugged individualists.
These "our voice/our selves" types ignore the altruistic and vocational collective history of true nursing leaders like Lavinia Lloyd Dock, who advocated for nurses to belong to unions. She recognized the employer's abuse of workers as a factor that drove nurses away from the bedside. Dock warned nurses not to become "accomplices in their own subordination," to the male dominated, paternalistic medical hierarchy. But, some nurse execs have unfortunately adopted the behaviors of the oppressors; their paychecks prevent them from understanding what it is they're doing is wrong for patients and wrong for workers.
Dock was a visionary and a leader of nurses who created extensive social and professional networks. She lobbied government officials to protest unsafe working conditions, and child labor. She led suffragist marches to Washington, and joined factory workers on picket lines! Lavinia Dock, Lillian Wald, Florence Nightingale, and other true professional nurses, up to and including members of The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, recognize(d) the socio-economic determinants of health, and they work to overcome barriers to health care access.
It was Florence Nightingale who said, "It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm."
And, "All the results of good nursing can be undone by one thing and one thing alone 'petty management'."
Talk about petty management, short staffing and the bottom line...Failure to staff with enough qualified RNs and ancillary staff to meet the (acuity) needs of patients is wrong, and unsafe! That's why we need professional RN unions today.
The union busters that are pictured in herring's post, with their "
every nurse for themselves" mantra are egoists. Egoism commonly means that the motive and valid end of action is self-interest (Webster's). These egoists lack an understanding of what actually is in their own best interest, like safe nurse to patient ratios and a strong professional labor union.
If every nurse was an egoist, who put the hospital spreadsheet above the needs of patients, the human race would die off rather quickly. These management consultant/ union busters use vague generalizations, threats, and selfish, misguided appeals to ego, in an attempt to persuade other nurses that they can succeed in doing absolutely everything completely by themselves, when it comes to exhorting management to change conditions, as circumstances require, for the benefit of patients. Most nurses know better!
It's so hard to believe that any nurse would be against ratios and staffing by acuity, or the union, CNA/NNOC, that succeeded in sponsoring the (first in the nation) Safe Nurse to Patient Ratio law. Many studies have validated their effectiveness at reducing preventable complications and even death among hospitalized patients.
It is in every one's best interest to support the altruistic social advocacy work of CNA/NNOC nurse members. It is the fastest growing all RN union and professional association in the country, and they are the vanguard of supporters for a national health plan, based on the single-payer model.
Altruism typically holds that individual fulfillment occurs through service to others. Relieving the suffering of others, by removing the barriers to safe, therapeutic and effective nursing care, and access to that care, contributes to the common good, provides meaning to and respects the dignity of each life.
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Re: Anti- union, anti- staffing ratio nurses
