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Pens and more pens!! Oh please, do not even get me started on that. When I find one that writes well, where the ink flows just right, and the grip is adequate, I try to lay claim on it. Trouble is, most of the time, it is not my own. So then the whole process starts again.

I find it ironic that the healthcare system is set up so that after the surgery is done and the patient leaves the OR, he or she starts competing with other patients for the attention and focus of the nurse, no matter what unit the patient is transferred to. A nurse who, mind you, would love to be able to do and say the same thing as the OR nurse: to be able to focus on one patient at a time without rushing from patient to patient and from room to room. At the Nurse Alliance of SEIU we will continue to fight for legislation that includes the current standards of one circulating OR nurse per room and incorporates safe staffing ratios in the rest of the units of the hospital.

Charting on COWs should be easier, user-friendly, and not take the nurse away from his or her patients even more!! In Florida, last hurricane season, with all the power outages, and generator failures, nurses had to resort to their own resources to get medicines and supplies b/c none of the computerized systems worked!! Oh, the wonders of technology! And where were the back-up plans and systems the facilities were supposed to have in place???

Can you expand on why the worst place to work is the med.ward? I have some idea but would love to read the reasons for your statement.

a great letter to the editor addressing the issues we have been mentioning at this site, and written by a bedside registered nurse was published on saturday, may 13th in knoxville, tn! read it at the following website: http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/perspectives/article/0,1406,kns_2797_4695416,00.html way to go, kay!!

Hi, Nurses across the nation! Happy Nurses' Week! Send an e-card to your fellow nurses from www.valuecarevaluenurses.org. I say if managers, administrators and the rest of the of the crowd out there is silent towards us, we take matters into our own hand. Let's recognize, apprecciate and thank nurses we know and work with, for their hard work, commitment, sacrifices, knowledge and expertise.

We have the solutions: safe staffing ratios no mandatory over-time no collusion among employers to set wages increased funding for nursing education and workforce development Research done by both economists and clinical researchers proves that patients' outcomes improve when RN staffing improves. Read all about it at www.nursealliance.org.

The coherent message will be that current working conditions at the bedside prevent nurses from providing the quality care the patients deserve. When we "triple" in ICU, the patients are at risk; when a med-surg nurse cares for 8 to 10 patients, the patients are at risk. Yet, when nurses excercise their professional judgement and challenge unsafe assignments, their professionalism is not taken into account and they are told to make do, if not something even more threatening. That is where the patient advocacy comes into the picture.

Thanks for the research and the information. Very helpful! I sent a letter to each of the contacts stating that our patients deserve a show that tells the story of the real nursing crisis and allows bedside nurses to fulfill our professional oath: to be a patient advocate. Anyone else????

I hope I am not reading you say that no nurse will step forward and tell it like it is! I know of several nurses that have not shied away from taking on the so called "big-guns". Nurses that testified at Congressional hearings, on radio, on TV, telling the story of bedside conditions and the choices healthcare corporations make that prevent us from delivering the quality care patients deserve. Nurses that have gone against Tenet at CON (Certificate of Need) hearings and won. Nurses that have spoken successfully at County hearings, warning against sale deals of community hospitals to large corporations. I know that the members of the Nurse Alliance of SEIU are always willing to tell the story, both in person and in writing.

Well said! To quote some of my favorite nurses: Marietta and Juanita from Miami: "My voice alone is just a whisper but with all of our voices together it will become a roar".

So, did you write to her about another Nurses Week coming up and why we need to address the serious crisis in healthcare that is gripping this nation?

I beg to disagree with some of your statements, my very dear savanah, though I feel your pain when you describe your turmoil! 1. I do not think that Oprah is not Prime time enough! She would not have gotten to where she is today were it not that so many people watch her show. She just did an exposé on the public school system that should have raised everybody's concern for where our children are going to end up: almost illiterate, reading way below the grade level and without the tools to defend themselves in this high-information society. All because of choices made by other than parents and educators!! But , if you have connections to Prime Time, 20/20 or any other show, I say: contact them and let us have the website so we can do it too! The more journalists that hear about what is happening to the frail, most at risk population, the higher the chances that one of them will be interested in taking this monster on. 2. The government just set minimum standards, like all laws. The facilities have the ability and the choice to improve upon those standards but choose not do so because the decision has been made that it is more important to provide higher revenues for the share holders and Board of Directors than it is to give good care to the patients (or residents in LTC). That is why at the Nurse Alliance of SEIU we have launched a campaign to hold healthcare organizations accountable for the choices they make that drive nurses away from the bedside. Read about it, the research that supports the solutions and participate in the conversation at: www.valuecarevaluenurses.org. All journeys begin with the first step(whoever said that). Are we willing to take it? Our patients and our profession deserve nothing less!

Done!! I sent the producer of Oprah's show an e-mail stating I thought they should do a show where bedside nurses can share their story with the public. Who is the next nurse that is going to send the same request? You know how this works, right? A lot of requests generates curiosity at the very least, and then the show will happen!!!

Can you give us all Oprah's website? That way by bombarding it with requests and stories we could see her response, and call the question on her.

That is what we, the nurses of the Nurse Alliance of SEIU are stating. Nurses throughout the country are joining in the conversation about solutions to the healthcare crisis that is gripping this nation and is undermining the quality of care we can provide for our patients. Visit the following website: www.valuecarevaluenurses.org and be part of the solution!!

Asking a lot of questions and details about the patient's condition during report (according to my co-workers).

:balloons: I am totally on board. I just attended the Nurse Alliance of Colorado Conference in Denver, where Diana Mason, RN and the Chief Editor of the American Journal of Nursing was the principal speaker. She talked about the same points. 1. Utilize research. It is out there so it cannot be denied nor do we have to rely on "common sense" or "intuition"(though both were proven right by the researchers): Linda Aiken, Jack Needleman, Peter Buerhaus, Institute for Women's Policy Research. To dowload the actual documents, visit www.nursealliancefl.org. and www.valuecarevaluenurses.org. 2. Enlist your co-workers and other Registered Nurses you know to write to the editor of your local newspaper. One letter is one voice, 10 becomes louder, and so forth. Nobody can do this alone. 3. A personal story as to how current conditions at the workplace prevent us from delivering the quality of care that our patients deserve resonates much more than just research. Hundreds of nurses are telling their stories on www.nurseblog.org. 4. Visit your elected officials in their offices, write an e-mail, fax in a letter or call your legislators on the phone and let them know what is going on. Elected officials are lonely! They only get to hear from lobbyists, not from their constituents. They love to hear from us, the people who elected them! If they receive 10 calls/letters/faxes/e-mails about the same subject, it raises said subject to the top forefront of their attention. And if it does not, guess what? We can vote them out next time!! 5. Suggest a concrete solution(good will and kindness are not tangible and difficult to enforce). Every day, with every patient and their families, nurses are creating care plans that are exactly that: concrete solutions to improve the patient's health. Using the nursing process, we can assess a problem, find a nursing diagnosis in which it fits, create a plan, design different implementations, and evaluate. All right!!! We can and we will do this!!! All over the nation, nurses are going to implement these steps and this will be a Nurses' Week to remember!!!!:balloons:

Oprah and Michael Moore both sound like good options. But they still are only a vehicle to get the story out there. We, the bedside nurses, the ones who deliver the care to the patient, are the ones who can do something about the current healthcare crisis gripping this nation. It is a complex problem that requires an innovative approach. We can get together with our fellow RNs throughout the country by joining the conversation about the solutions to the problem at: www.valuecarevaluenurses.org. We are the most respected professionals by the public at every poll that is done, so our statements will carry a lot of weight. We can do all the suggested actions mentioned by a previous nurse: write letters to the editor, have meetings with legislators when they are in their district, refuse to "triple up" in the ICU, refuse an unsafe assignment, hold hospital administrators accountable for their own policies and "matrix" or "grid"; in other words, we can take the decision to become true patient and profession advocates by acting as such.

I work in NICU and love it! Cannot do geriatric, becomes too sad. Would avoid working in a non-unionized facility if at all possible. If I went to work at one, would organize my co-workers to join Nurse Alliance of SEIU!

"Raiding", "decertifying", are terms that define dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs in terms of representation in a unionized environment. Participation in the everyday activities of the union as an organization ensures that the voice of the members is heard. Not enough of us do that. Elected leaders can be voted out without having to change the entire structure and start from the beginning. Chief negotiators and staff of any new organization at a workplace have to develop relationships and navigate the political minefield of the city/county/healthsystem. It takes a while and a lot of work before the dust settles after a decertification. All that energy and effort could have been spent in restructuring the existing organization, but I guess some people feel more attracted to something new. In the news article that started this thread, the RNs had an RN only voice, there was no dilution with non-licensed staff, and all they did is take a chance with a new organization with no experience outside California. Go figure!!

Of course employees talk with or to management without "the union"!! WE are the union!! So we can talk and meet with our managers as much as (or as little as) before forming a union. Up to now, your stated perceptions of unions come straight out of a union buster's manual: "third party", "outsiders", "free will". You seem to have missed the social and legislative improvements that happened because of the involvement and work of union members. All over, not just in the USA!

"It was never mentioned to him.." Now that is a novel and naive idea! People talk and word of any unionizing attempt spreads faster than the speed of light. The first ones to hear about it are usually the managers. "In the late 1990's we were 1:4 on M/S" I am glad that hospital implemented safe staffing ratios voluntarily. Patient care can only have benefitted from that measure. That is one hospital only, though. I would argue that all patients deserve access to the same care, not be dependent on which hospital they get admitted to. That is why the Nurse Alliance of SEIU members seek to improve the quality of patient care and create an environment with better working conditions.

Guess what? The word "union" was mentioned and your CEO came running!Doesn't that tell you something? Anything but share the power on a binding contractual legal document. What you have now can be taken away anytime and there is no recourse.

I totally agree. Packing up and leaving is what too many nurses have been doing for too long. Going somewhere else in the hopes that, at the next hospital, conditions will be better. Only to find out that they are not, or that they are worse! And leaving again, to continue searching. A recent poll of acute care nurses in Fl found that, on average, nurses had been at their current place of employment for 5 years or less. And these were not new grads! It takes commitment to the facility and the patient community that it serves to stay and struggle to make improvements and to have a real voice in the process through forming a union. I applaud the nurses that do both!