Wilcox Hospital strike still on...

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I absolutely cannot believe they want to fire 14 LPN's. This is totally not aloha. Big corporate tactics. We need to really support the striking nurses. My partner and I would like to move to Hawaii, and to Kauai (he is an LPN), but we will NOT cross this picket line. Period. The strikers are in my prayers.

Forgive me because I truly don't know the situation and don't live or work in Hawaii. BUT I read above about the competencies and chart reviews. Having limited information about what they're doing...

I want to say that the hospital I work at does the same thing and always has. My supervisor does chart reviews and individual nurse competencies at least once monthly as part of JCAHO stuff. AND we all have to do quizzes and competencies periodically and if we don't complete them in time we could be fired.

Of course, because they are not directly looking to try to fire people, I don't mind the competencies and audits at all. It ensures patient safety and that is my bottom line. I don't mind a lousy nurse getting fired when she is incompetent and/or unsafe all along. Good nurses shouldn't feel threatened by this. I'm not saying if you feel threatened you're not a good nurse! But you shouldn't have anything to worry about if you've been doing things the right way all along without having to be checked up on.

Forgive me because I truly don't know the situation and don't live or work in Hawaii. BUT I read above about the competencies and chart reviews. Having limited information about what they're doing...

I want to say that the hospital I work at does the same thing and always has. My supervisor does chart reviews and individual nurse competencies at least once monthly as part of JCAHO stuff. AND we all have to do quizzes and competencies periodically and if we don't complete them in time we could be fired.

Of course, because they are not directly looking to try to fire people, I don't mind the competencies and audits at all. It ensures patient safety and that is my bottom line. I don't mind a lousy nurse getting fired when she is incompetent and/or unsafe all along. Good nurses shouldn't feel threatened by this. I'm not saying if you feel threatened you're not a good nurse! But you shouldn't have anything to worry about if you've been doing things the right way all along without having to be checked up on.

Oh for heaven's sake this is a SCARE TACTIC, not a quality assurance thing. It's a way to threaten the striking nurses into submission. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with assuring patient safety.

I don't think you quite understand the concept here, pardon me for saying.

Hawaii hospitals have long felt that they have a "captive audience" in regard to their nursing staff. In many instances they may be right. As they see it, this affords them the right to treat the nurses like crap.

The strike by Oahu nurses over three years ago pointed a few of the Oahu hospitals in the right direction. It also sent a lot of Oahu nurses to the mainland.

Oahu learned its lesson, IMHO. Queens is now striving to become a "Magnet" hospital. It has a long way to go, IMHO. It may be all strutting and pretense now, but it may benefit both nurses and patients in the long run.

Wilcox has already blown it bigtime. Wilcox, despite its affiliation with Hawaii Pacific Health, is basically a small town country hospital. The only game in town, which is what HPH is counting on.

But nurses will only stand for so much. The very infrastructure of the facility will be destroyed if the Wilcox nurses leave because the situation at Wilcox has become untenable.

The whole situation is pretty damn disgusting, IMHO.

*****

As a new RN of an HPH hospital in Oahu... I didn't even know about the Wilcox strike until my company sent a letter to all employees updating us on the strike from HPHs point of view.

It sounds pretty brutal though... I'm kinda afraid to read more about it. =/

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Sigh......

Why can't people understand... And do you get FIRED if they found a mistake in your charts during QA? And do they tell you that they are doing this strickly to find reasons to fire you??

Sigh again.

Well, you might understand where Zenman is coming from if you gently ask him what he did during the last nurses' strike in Hawaii. :wink2:

Not looking to start any animosity here. I'll proudly tell you where I was---on the picket line.