The solution to nursing problems

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I posted this before and it seems to have been lost.

I think we can corrent all of the major problems in nursing by simply having all of us take the same day off. Let's say February 11th, 2003, all nurses on duty go home and no, I repeat no nurse comes into work that day. This would include all LPNS, RNs, ADNs, BSNs, MSNs, and RN/Phds. Exactly 24 hours later we return to work and see have some meaningful discussion with the powers in charge.

Most of the country didnt know it happened. But it happened. It was at the time when RNs were being downsized & laid off in masses. RNs, LPNs, aides, & MDs marched for nurses & pts care. The point was that what was happening to nurses at the time was affecting pts too (just like it is now). Anyway it was a great day, put together, handled & produced by Laura Gasparis, RN, and supported by RN unions, healthcare worker unions, the state nurses associations, & the ANA - who all promoted the event & got their members there - and some MDs & MD unions even paricipated. A lot of politicians started paying attention. At first there was just a few who agreed to speak at the rally, but when they all saw the size of the crowd streaming to the Capitol, those politicians who had said NO were falling all over themselves changing their minds & asking for a chance to be seen & heard with the nurses. After the rally, we had appointments with our own legislators in their offices to discuss our issues. We could have had 2.7 million RNs there but we only had 35,000 RNs & healthcare workers & still the impact was immense.

Imagine if more RNs had gotten invloved?

There was a video made of this day & its available for purchase or you can see a preview of it online:

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"NURSES GREATEST DAY - Video Of The Nurses March On DC!

Nurses Week 1995

35,000 nurses strong fill Pennsylvania Ave. from the Capitol to the White House. They went to the Nation's Capitol to make the public aware of the concerns nurses have for their patients. Relive this historic event. Forty-Five minutes that include all major events and speakers. You may even see yourself, if you were there!"

preview this video at

http://www.greatnurses.com/Videos.html

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To those of you who have said that the nurses on duty would have to stay miss the point, no one would stay at work. The country would have to experience 24 hours without nursing care.

While marches are great, they are also impotent. The only way to assume power is to use it.

Originally posted by Dave Frederick

To those of you who have said that the nurses on duty would have to stay miss the point, no one would stay at work. The country would have to experience 24 hours without nursing care.

While marches are great, they are also impotent. The only way to assume power is to use it.

A nurse cannot just walk off the floor without a relief. It is illegal to do that by every Nurse Practice Act I know of. That nurse would lose her license, plain and simple. While I'm all for change and speaking up, I'm not inclined to sacrifice my license to do it.

If nobody showed up for work Monday morning, the nurses who worked Sunday night would have to stay mandatory ot because if they leave with no RNs to take over their pts, they are abandoning their pts & can lose their license. Who feels the effect of the action?

If youre talking about a national strike to begin on a certain date, theres problems with that too. Since we work in a healthcare environment legally we would have to give 10 days notice to strike. That gives the employers 10 days to turn on the unity-busting scare tactics to prevent their nurses from going out - & it gives time to drain the committment of the rest of the nurses by offering the golden scab carrot $$$$. RNs succumb to those tactics (as they always do) & the effect youre looking for is lost.

Also, its illegal for city, state, & federal govt workers to strike at all and it is illegal for union nurses to strike while they have a contract in effect - so that leaves out a lot of nurses in a lot of facilities, in a lot of states from being able to participate. For example, 99.9% of the direct pt care RNs working in all kinds of facilities in NYC are union, so that means NYC would not be included in this national RN 'event'. If theres to be a 'national event', it should be one that every RN can legally take part in.

Also, if you strike but dont give 10 days strike notice for the hospital to provide for alternate pt care, or you just walk out one day, you abandoned your pts & you lose your license. Surely you are not asking nurses to give up their livelihood? I may be reading you wrong but it seems to me youre just saying "pass the word - dont come to work on this day".

Then what?

Specializes in CV-ICU.

Walking off the floor with out giving report to an oncoming nurse is known as patient abandonment and EVERY states' Nurse Practice Act lists it as a reason to lose your license. We want attention, not infamy. Because we deal with patients' lives (instead of boat cargoes), nurses were excluded (along with other "vital"occupations like police and firefighters) from some of the first Employee Protection Laws and NLRB rulings many years ago and that's why some employers think they can force nurses to work Mandatory Overtime.

Specializes in Oncology/Haemetology/HIV.

JT,

I was at the march on Washington - it was awesome!!!!!!

It will require more than a march to change things - it means nurses telling all the dirt - the names of MDs that mistreat nurses, the abuses by administration, the abuses of HMOs - it means every single nurse in the US refusing to keep their mouthes shut.

Instead of putting down each other and backbiting, let's talk about the real problems that affect us.

I recently quit a job over such an issue. A physician was abusive on the phone to me and it could have harmed a patient. I charted his highly inappropriate order (as he had said it) in the MDs orders. The MD pitched a fit the next day (that I had the nerve not to "candy coat" what he said. My director called me in to rewrite the order and to give me a written disciplinary notice. I refused it and told her that I refused to write a lie into the chart, and refused to sign the disciplinary notice. She said that I could be fired for not signing the notice. I said "Go ahead". Of course, she was blowing smoke, but promptly several coworkers decided to leave. I left (she would have always been looking over my shoulder) . But you know, the people who stayed will not put up with her crap or the MDs crap anymore. The director's rep is so bad, that nurses that would work there, won't now. There are more people writing "the physician's exact words" down, and administration knows that their threats will get them no where.

We all have to band together and do the "Right Thing". As the byline says "We will only get as much crap as we put up with"

BUT...they could not demand those nurses work 24hrs! There is a limit of hours allowed to work..which means the management nurses would have to come out of their offices to do patient care ...and the nurses could then leave. You can demand they stay at the hospital 24hrs!

The "march" didn't make a dent the last time..but a walk out would.

Desperate measures for desperate times!

correction "you CAN'T demand nurses to stay at the hospital 24hrs"!

Sorry about THAT typo!!

They would have to fire every nurse in the country.

Originally posted by Dave Frederick

They would have to fire every nurse in the country.

Love your militant spirit! But, that isn't the point. Firing someone wouldn't matter. With the nursing shortage, there's plenty of jobs. The problem is that it is a nurse's DUTY to protect her patients. No political statement can supercede that duty. Abandonment isn't just walking off. Abandonment is failing to provide for a CONTINUATION of patient care before leaving. See the position statement from my BON, which is similar to the position statements from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing on abandonment. A nurse cannot walk away like you suggest.

http://www.ded.state.mo.us/regulatorylicensing/professionalregistration/nursing/pdfs/NursingBOARDPOSITIONSTATEMENTPTABANDONMENT112001.pdf

Specializes in Hemodialysis, Home Health.

I'm with you, Youda ! Another ol' hippy ready to rumble ! :cool:

And with you, too, JT ! You guys have it right !

So when do we leave? Let's DO IT !!! This time the press will notice. Because the PATIENTS are noticing ! Patients are CONSUMERS and when consumers raise cain, the press notices.

I say we go for it... so when? where? How does one go about organizing such a thing? We need to reach 2.7 Miilion nurses and hope HALF of them will show. Hey, a MILLION nurses showing up in D.C. would not, COULD not go unnoticed! And yes... the OTHER part is getting involved legislatively. It's a MUST and if we can sit here at our 'puters and gripe and wail, then we sure as fire can take 2 minutes to email the letter JT ALREADY PROVIDED and send it on via the ALREADY PROVIDED link JT included in her previous posts on the "recruiting foreign nurses" thread. Let's get BUSY, nurses ! The time is at hand ! The alarm has been sounded ! Wake up and get WITH it ! Let's not just talk the talk. We MUST walk the walk ! Get those emails out to the senators and congressmen.. I just did and it couldn't be easier ! Send a copy of the letter to ALL your nursing friends.. every nurse you know and the link to the website. If every one of us did at least THIS it would be a wake up call up there in DC. Lets get off our duffs, dang it, and DO it ! :(

James Huffman makes an excellent point. You know that patient in 34B who you've fallen in love with, who reminds you of your sister, brother, aunt/uncle, Grandma/pa? Who is going to give her/him their meds tonight? What if she has no family to take care of her? What if no one is there when she goes into her fatal arrythmia? Do you want her death to be on your shoulders in order to prove a point? And maybe not MANY will die, but how many is too many? Don't get me wrong, I don't like the mistreatment that we endure either, but I'm not willing to sacrifice the lives of the innocent to make my point. Do you think that Doctors would come into the hospitals to take care of their patients? Maybe, but still like someone else said, other nurses would be pressed into duty, the military nurses (who can't strike) would have to spread out all over the country, and by then the "strike" would be over. There are serious consequences to what you suggest. We can't punish the patients in order to get what we want. The patients suffer already for the constant understaffing too! Most of my patients feel sorry for what hospital nurses have to endure in order for the hospital to save money. There has to be another option. As inneffective as marches might appear, the innocent do not suffer as a result of them. Every day, the government makes decisions that effect us. But what percentage of us are members of a state or national nurses' association that pays lobbyists to lobby for nurses? You can bet that Doctors and hospitals are looking out for themsleves. Change has to start from the grass roots...and the government is one part of that. It's all about who has the loudest voice, or in abscence of that, the deepest pockets. But we don't have to make others suffer in order to further our cause.

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