For comparisons sake, I made a couple of phone calls -
First to the Texas Nurses Association – according to them, there are about 170,000 nurses in Texas, but only 3,800 of them are members of the Texas Nurses Association. That means that about 2% of all nurses in Texas are members of the TNA.
In contrast, the Texas Medical Association has 40,683 members as of March 31, 2006 according to a phone call placed to their membership department. There are about 53,000 physicians in Texas according to the Texas board of medical examiners. 76% of physicians are members of their professional organization.
HUH???? Are we listed in Webster's under the definition for apathy?
Any lobbyist worth his political salt knows how to play BOTH sides of the coin!
Ok ... if working both sides is more productive ... and supporting Republicans is so great for nurses ...
I notice that TNA supported Republican Rick Perry for Governor. He's been in office for over five years now.
There's no ratio law. Group One is obviously a problem that's only gotten worse.
So ... what has this bipartisan support accomplished on behalf of Texas nurses?
I'm really curious because it's not like anybody on this thread or others has said things are improving there. If anything, this thread and others are about things getting worse.
And for worse, not better - as a result of this decision: your national organization is weak, pathetic and useless.
But like I said, the ANA is irrelevant by their own choice.
Which is why CNA is launching their own national organization. With the right leadership, partisan politics can work very well ... as proven by the California ratio law.
Just about everybody knows how worthless ANA is, for reasons that go far beyond their politics. That's why CNA broke off them them years ago.
And this thread is about the Texas Nurses Assoc. (I don't say that to discourage the input of non-Texans but to point out the differences in politics between Texas and Calif: and indeed, between the Calif/NY coasts and 'fly-over' country in general: allying with democrats is NOT a successful national strategy in a nation that re-elected President Bush. Think about that.)
How is being a left wing activist gonna draw any support or public policy advocacy in a state that doesn't have A SINGLE democrat elected to state-wide office?
My personal belief: being a left wing organization not only made your ratio law MORE DIFFICULT to get: it threatens the law at every step. When you step on toes to get your way, those toes have a remarkable ability to step back, when the time is right.
Ask Arnold about that. . .
If you want to believe that your politics and nursing advocacy ARE THE SAME THING, then don't be surprised and don't complain about the lack of unity that YOU are helping to perpetuate with this viewpoint.
I don't buy that disunity is the only way to unify. Our voices, if strong, would be persuasive to ANY politician. Partisan politics is but one reason why those voices are weak.
The point isn't to disunify anyone. The point is one of political pragmatism: which party is more likely to help nurses? TNA has supported Republicans and contributed to their campaigns. Again, I ask, what have these Republicans done for Texas nurses? Not much from what I can tell.
As far as the California ratio law: it's now stronger than it's ever been. Schwarzenegger's opposition to it, and the court cases that followed, set several legal precendents that actually protect the law. From now on, no governor can try to unilaterally suspend the law by executive order as Schwarzenegger tried to do.
The only way the law can be changed now is through the legislature. And any politician now knows it would be crazy to do that because of what happened to Schwarzenegger on the ratio issue. His approval rating dropped 30 points when nurses opposed him. Nurses were the first group to come out against him, and they won big time. It's put every politician on notice that it would be political suicide to attack ratios and nurse issues in general.
I agree that supporting Democrats probably wouldn't have helped with national elections of the past. And it may not even help in Texas. But now that Bush is losing support even amongst Republicans and, Bush's unpopularity may even affect Congressional elections, Democratic support could very well pay off in the future. There was a time when Texas was run by Democrats. Who's to say that won't happen again, especially with Republicans doing so poorly in polls across the board.
Maybe that will never happen in Texas but, quite frankly, what have you guys got to lose? It's not like the Republicans are doing anything for you.
No organization is going to be perfect. And not everyone is going to agree with everything that an organization does. There's always going to be disunity at some level. The question is: who has the best shot of actually doing something for nurses? For now, at least, it's unions and the Democratic party because nobody else has delivered any real results for nurses.
The problem here is that nurses havnt delivered results for themselves. They havent formed any effective organization - so at this point it wouldnt matter what "side" they were aligned with.
Nope - the way to do this is to keep politics OUT of it. Be able to work with ALL of the politicians and stay away from hard line left or right. Especially in Texas. I can already tell you from working with another org in another industry that what works in California don't work here in Tejas on the Good Ol Boys.
What have we got to lose by having our 'nursing' organizations sell out to partisan politics? Any semblance of unity. That was my point.
~faith,
Timothy.
But is there a Nursing association that doesn't participate in partisan politics on some level? For any professional organization to get anywhere, it will have to be politically active, and politics in America are partisan. That's how it is and there's no way around it. Hospitals have enough money to play both sides. As much as I see the benefit of playing both sides, I just don't see any Nursing association ever having enough money to do the same.
I think unity should come from Nurses, not organizations. If all we can do is argue on forums about which team we think it's best to play for, while our profession spirals down the toilet, there isn't an association to save us. We need to get over partisan politics, and find unity as Nurses first and foremost. How can anyone expect a Nurses association to play fair in Washington if we can't in an online forum?
gauge14iv, MSN, APRN, NP
1,622 Posts
Any lobbyist worth his political salt knows how to play BOTH sides of the coin!