redem2

Got out of HS at 16 and went to Nursing school.Graduated with BSN at 21. My older patients had a hard time following my instructions as I looked too young to be a RN. Thought i was still a student. That was 35 yrs ago!

I can do everyhing else like clean poop or suction your lungs out but please don't ask me to clean your dentures. I don't know why but i have this strange feeling when holding them in my fingers. It's so freaky!

I used to work 8, 12, even 16 if needed but that was when I was younger. Before my MLOA I was on 12 and been miserable. I worked 2 days a week split then. I can't imagine how my body could do 12's when I come back. It sure takes a toll on the body after all these 34 years.

The situation everybody mentioned about VUMC is happening all over .As long as nurses are not united and part of a bargaining unit, ie union, things like these are bound to happen.It's just so familiar and everything you described was almost what happened in our hospital . Nurses need to get educated about unions. Get a worthwhile union that would show you how to protect your jobs , your future and nursing practice. What is your Board of Nursing doing? If they allow other disciplines to encroach into your scope of practice there would come a day where we won't have our RN practice because we will be part of an endangered species. In California they started to re-engineer our hospitals in the 90's in response to the bottomline of HMOs. Hospital corporations' CEOs were buying and vacationing in exotic places and getting ridiculous amounts of compensation while their hospitals are staffed inadequately and patients are not cared right.For profit corporations are buying hospitals(mergers and acquisitions) and laying off longtime employees,sending a message to the young students that nursing is not such a career to get into nowadays. This was the beginning of our nursing shortage. HMOs did not take care of our patients. Patients were discharged too soon from hospitals, they were not followed up well outside of the hospitals and they get readmitted in even worse condition. California Nurses Association , as a union, disaffiliated from ANA, because the same powers that be in the ANA were the same nursing administrators in charge of hospitals who were re-engineering and deskilling the RNs and replaced them with unlicensed personnels. CNA decided to educate non union nurses and organized them,expose HMOs and CEOs(Tenet healthcare) excessess . CNA fought to get RN to Patient Staffing Ratio and took them more than 10 years to finally get it. Now it has ore than 65,000 members and counting. Our nursing registration is slowly going up and a lot of nurses are coming back to the bedside.CNA union nurses are enjoying some of the highest salaries in CA. We still have problems but it's nothing that we can not handle. I would have gotten out of nursing yrs ago if not for CNA giving me back my inspiration and motivated me to fight for my patients and my profession.

Hello! I also work medsurg all my nursing life. I'd prefer all surgical pts if it's up to me but for 20 yrs or so it's been a mixed population of nursing

I have suggestions for upcoming topics.... How about discussions on single payer healthcare system that's publicly financed and administered. another is discussions on publicly financed elections,ie. clean money...

I agree that decertification is not the way to do it. If as a member you think your union is not doing what it's supposed to do you have to get active and participate. What is not working? I believe the union's success depends on each and every member's participation. I'm a member of CNA and I urge non union RNS to check on what CNA as a union and prof. organization is doing for RNS not only in California but outside.As healthcare providers we need to think of other people, like the uninsured or the minimally insured and how they affect ER admissions and ultimately affect hospital admissions . If we have a better healthcare system in this country ERs don't have to be crowded with patients who don't have insurance.Hospital admissions would be in control thus staffing/pt ratio will be more or less predictable. As a CNA member I look forward to this, when all citizens have equal access to healthcare.