mandatory overtime

Its about time that nurses stand up to the abuse that we are subject to. You should come here to Washington State, where there is a nursing school, it seems, on every corner. To make matters even worse, there is not alot of industry here in Eastern Washington. The biggest employers are hospitals, and the health care industry.

There has always been high unemployment here in Eastern Washington, and wives are working to support the family when the husband has been laid off.

This puts nurses in a catch-22 situation. If they make waves, and get fired, they have no income. What would you do?

When I moved here, I went to work at Deaconess. The nurses told me that they only got raises every three years. That was it. Benefits were terrible. There was no job security. Nurses worked there for years. The did not know that it was not like that in other areas.

When I went to work there, I could not believe how bad the equipment was, the most user unfriendly stuff I had ever used. They finally voted in SEIU, after YEARS of refusing union membership. They were not happy with them, and they voted them out. The hospital was bought out by a for profit company from the South, and things are already going downhill.

What can I say? I think that someone put it best on here, when they said that nurses should wear signs on their backs that say, "Kick Me". JMHO and my NY $0.02.

Lindarn, RN, BSN, CCRN
Spokane, Washington