lucretiamott

Thank you CNA/NNOC for bringing this about. As an RN, facing a lay-off due to budget cuts in the public sector, this was a ray of sunshine and the hope that nurses can and will lead the way for better patient care and nursing practice standards throughout the country now that this merger has happened. You give me hope and pride in my profession again. I have no doubt that if you were my collective bargaining representive at this point, I and many others would not be facing un-employment in July.

This is a follow up to my most degrading moments as a nurse practitioner. What I (we)did about some of the most degrading things we were being asked to do by management as nurses and NP's: Generally Revolted and : Started an "underground Clinic" where we just skipped the billing altogether and treated the patients the way we say fit and wrote management up. Got written up ourselves for writing letters but sent letters anyway to incompetent MD's with other MD's co-signing with us. Got tossed out of the management seminar but called our bosses who wrote a letter of complaint to the higher ups not to waste the public's money on seminars like this for our system and allowed us (the staff) to re-design our selves. My supervising physician stated "she wasn't into TQM nor scientific management since it reminded her of vodoo economic theory of trickle down. Support SB 840/HR 676 and joined CNA/NNOC. Regularly lobby for the above.

I had a hard time paring down my list but to summarize: I was asked to do the following as an Nurse Practitioner under managed care planning: 1) Don't sit down in the exam room during a patient visit. It gives the patient the expectation that you have unlimited time to spend with them to get to the reason of theand don't ask open ended questions. 2) Went to a "efficiency/improved team work" seminar that wanted me to wear a headset during the patient exam to listen to staff in charge of clinic flow to keep the clinic flow going. I said I couldn't listen to the patient and they got mad at me. I eventually got tossed out of the seminar due to my attitude that seemed to want to pick and chose their program. One of my best ideas was to throw out eligibility altogether and just have one, single-payer instead of multiple insurance plans to pay for the visit. That is where a lot of clinic time is wasted in my current job in public health. 3) Same seminar session would have a "scribe" take my charting notes while I am examing the patient, write my note and do my plan for me with my dictation to speed up the thru-put time. 4) Answer to a "Dr. Black calling" signal that was proposed if a clinician was in a room with a patient too long (longer than 20 minutes). It was a way of getting the clinician out of the room to answer a fictitious call and end the visit. 5) Buy my own clinic equipment. If you can't get your management team to buy you clinic equipment (like a simple weight scale) to save time buy it yourself at WALMART. 6) If a patient can't pay for their visit to save time and the clinic money and save your job, send the patient to the neareast VERSATELER and have them withdraw the money needed to pay for your fee before you treat them. 7) Don't write a letter to an MD regarding a patient clinically mis-mangaged by the said Doctor that you are refering the patient to a specialist (to diagnose the damage done) and then send it and chart you are sending it to the said doctor. NP's are not suppose to write letters to doctors. 8) Asking me to use the new "ATM" card reader installed in my homeless clinic to charge some homeless patients a fee. They don't have credit cards in addition to not having a home. That's why they are called "homeless" Just a short list of some of the dumbest and most un-ethical ideas from management who bought into "damaged care" theory of increasing revenue at the expense of quality care and nursing ethics. Nancy Lewis, RN FNP

Good comments all around. I am covered under collective bargaining by SEIU and it isn't the same union it was before. Just when I thought as a nurse I could go back and figure out what the latest budget cuts will mean for our clinic, I get a call from a company hired by SEIU-I, to ask me a series of questions highly biased in my opinion against CNA. It was not a scientific poll to find out my opinion but a highly inflammatory series of questions that viewed CNA in a totally, negative light. This was a "slander poll" not a poll that would in any way shape or form give any true understanding of what unions, the fight on health care reform, nor a more balanced view of CNA by a union, that has lost all credibility in my view as a legitimate voice for RN's especially. My dues money is being spent not to fight cuts to local health care but to tarnish and destroy a group of dedicated nurses who want single-payer, a decent contract and union democracy. No matter how many suspect polls, divisive mailers, carefully, scripted videos and lastly, lawsuits against our own members in UHW-W who are being targeted within SEIU itself, it is a shame that all of this money is not going to improve nursing care in our hospital and to fight the cuts that will end surely have the opposite effect. SEIU-I has lost all credibility on this issue with this latest poll that will surely be touted as an accurate view of SEIU members of CNA nurses. But it isn't. I guess the prevailing view at the top is the more mud they sling, the more it will stick. But, in my view it only sticks to SEIU-I. I think that this attempt to tarnish an image of CNA will only engender more sympathy or in the view of some, make joining a union less appealing. Unionization is difficult in our country at the present moment, made more so by unions that chose, like SEIU-I, to get bigger by making deals with corporate employers who in the end will sacrifice our nursing responsibility to our patients by asking us to ignore problems. Nurses have a right and I would say a duty to their patients. CNA is both a union and a professional association of registered nurses. I think that is a strong argument in their favor. And in today's world of corporatized healthcare, where profit and money is often times comes first before patients, I would want an organization/union that has the credibility, stamina, fighting spirit and the patience to with-stand the avalanche of divisive innuendo and slander so often apart of our political landscape these days. For me, CNA/NNOC is truly a voice for nurses and has a vision for healthcare that SEIU-lacks at the current moment. lucretiamott

CNA/NNOC executive director Rose-Ann DeMoro, although, you are correct isn't an RN, neither is Mr. Andy Stern or past, executive director of SEIU 790, Josie Moonie. If I had to chose who I would want to hire to lead a profession of RN's as an executive director, the later two choices, given their current and past tract records , their late in the day and than stellar performance on protecting staff nursing ratios against our Govenator in 05 and their silence on single-payer, medicare for all program, then Rose-Ann wins hands down for me on issues that should be at the for-front of the debate on health care reform in this nation. Executive Director Rose-Ann DeMoro has a proven tract record of not being afraid to stand up for CNA/NNOC beliefs that safe-staffing and a single-payer health care system would go along way in improving patient care and access to that care by patients shut out of this system. She has stood her ground with a grace and dignity that even her detractors must acknowledge on behalf of nurses who will continue to fight for these issues. If Florence Nightingale were alive today, she would have hired Rose Ann in a heart-beat to help her organize her own struggles to improve the care practices of nurses and fight for better care for patients. lucretiamott

Dear all, If you have read anything about the woman whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow, she was a radical, a revolutionary, a bit of a trouble maker and above all an idealist who felt that it was her vocation in life to not only improve the lot of the sick, but open doors and windows to women who were not allowed to have a voice, let alone a position of authority and responsibility in English society. She fought many battles with doctors who viewed nurses as servants with no brains, government officials in the military and in public health who viewed dainty women like her like pests and lastly, her own family and a society who believed women should restrict their activities to the parlor when it came to political or religious thoughts. She wrote a small novel, "Cassandra" that would have scandalized British strait-laced society had it been published in her lifetime, intimating that Christ, upon returning for his second try, would come back as a women, fight for the poor and not be recognized as significant because he chose to return in the form of a woman whose significance in society has already been discussed. The best work so far about her, "The Making of A Radical Theologian" by British historian, Val Webb, is a tehttps://allnurses.com/forums/images/smilies/added/cry.gifstimony to her fighting spirit and her determination to change herself and better the lot of the common man in her day. I am new to "allnurses" but I am not new to nursing. I have been an RN for 17 years and thing as an NP (13 years now) have gone from good, to bad to ugly when it comes to my practice in public health and health care in general. It is becomig more difficult to care for patients given our current system that asks for the cash, the credit card and insurance number first before we find out why our patients are sick. If you do manage to get through the door you will be billed, co-payed and deductibled to death. The system is currently on life-support supported by the largest, meanest and lastly, socio-pathic group of corporations, insurance companies and hospital chains, who like the oil companies gouge us to death, literally, to make money off our patient's pain and suffering and our naivete over our ethical duty to fight this system on behalf the woman who struggled to build for us. I have read the comments about the need for "unity" for all nurses. But unity at the expense of what?? I have followed the arguments carefully, and as an SEIU nurse who has seen my local change from a small, fighting local into a large conglomerate who is currently, capitulating to the downtown interests, I yearn for a return to our days when we challenged vocally and militantly and won back our services with our patients at our side. Now, we sit and watch as 14 critical care PHN's are lost, our workman's comp clinic out-sourced, nursing home units closed and nurses re-assigned and credit card readers in my clinic and even in homeless clinics up and ready to go to charge my patients for the services I know many cannot afford. There has not be a mailer, a flyer or a fax to organize or inform of planned rallies or efforts to fight this time. But there have been many flyers, mailers and pizza meeting to bash CNA/NNOC over the past few weeks. Mr. Stern's letter rings hollow, when there are many nurses like the 400 in Reno, who long for a change out of SEIU. The head of that local even intimated that the 400 who voted were ill-informed and plain stupid and didn't quite understand what they were signing even though the card clearly stated the obvious. SEIU-I is dumbing down the process itself. That is why there is a reform movement within SEIU-I, ltself to take back the locals and return member-driven priorities back to the local level. In conclusion, the issues for the registered nurse in this debate, have gone beyond just what union will represent us in collective bargaining. It is fundamentally, about who will control our practice, our voice as advocates for our patients and who has the will, the spirit, the determination to fight a system that doesn't respect that practice nor our judgement. Unity is a comforting concept but unity at the expense of silencing the voice of the RN as a patient advocate or allowing that practice to be controlled by a system bent on placing us between good nursing judgement and our employers will to save or make money isn't ethical. As Florence would say, "All the results of good nursing, can be undone by one thing and one thing alone, petty management". She understood that concept even in the mid 1800's that management, in what ever form it took, would try and undermine that judgement when allowed too. Therefore, I would invite, those who want unity above all to read the life and work, of the woman we celebrate tomorrow. She has been in the shadows of history far too long. She was a radical, a mystic, an innovator and a militant who fought long and hard to give us the profession we have today. In my opinion, she would relish the debate going on in nursing but in the end support those who would challenge the system itself, the thinkers and the visionaries who want to change our system before it radically, changes us. I thank my colleagues at CNA/NNOC who speak for me and my patients.

Dear all, If you have read anything about the woman whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow, she was a radical, a revolutionary, a bit of a trouble maker and above all an idealist who felt that it was her vocation in life to not only improve the lot of the sick, but open doors and windows to women who were not allowed to have a voice, let alone a position of authority and responsibility in English society. She fought many battles with doctors who viewed nurses as servants with no brains, government officials in the military and in public health who viewed dainty women like her like pests and lastly, her own family and a society who believed women should restrict their activities to the parlor when it came to political or religious thoughts. She wrote a small novel, "Cassandra" that would have scandalized British strait-laced society had it been published in her lifetime, intimating that Christ, upon returning for his second try, would come back as a women, fight for the poor and not be recognized as significant because he chose to return in the form of a woman whose significance in society has already been discussed. The best work so far about her, "The Making of A Radical Theologian" by British historian, Val Webb, is a testimony to her fighting spirit and her determination to change herself and better the lot of the common man in her day. I am new to "allnurses" but I am not new to nursing. I have been an RN for 17 years and thing as an NP (13 years now) have gone from good, to bad to ugly when it comes to my practice in public health and health care in general. It is becomig more difficult to care for patients given our current system that asks for the cash, the credit card and insurance number first before we find out why our patients are sick. If you do manage to get through the door you will be billed, co-payed and deductibled to death. The system is currently on life-support supported by the largest, meanest and lastly, socio-pathic group of corporations, insurance companies and hospital chains, who like the oil companies gouge us to death, literally, to make money off our patient's pain and suffering and our naivete over our ethical duty to fight this system on behalf the woman who struggled to build for us. I have read the comments about the need for "unity" for all nurses. But unity at the expense of what?? I have followed the arguments carefully, and as an SEIU nurse who has seen my local change from a small, fighting local into a large conglomerate who is currently, capitulating to the downtown interests, I yearn for a return to our days when we challenged vocally and militantly and won back our services with our patients at our side. Now, we sit and watch as 14 critical care PHN's are lost, our workman's comp clinic out-sourced, nursing home units closed and nurses re-assigned and credit card readers in my clinic and even in homeless clinics up and ready to go to charge my patients for the services I know many cannot afford. There has not be a mailer, a flyer or a fax to organize or inform of planned rallies or efforts to fight this time. But there have been many flyers, mailers and pizza meeting to bash CNA/NNOC over the past few weeks. Mr. Stern's letter rings hollow, when there are many nurses like the 400 in Reno, who long for a change out of SEIU. The head of that local even intimated that the 400 who voted were ill-informed and plain stupid and didn't quite understand what they were signing even though the card clearly stated the obvious. SEIU-I is dumbing down the process itself. That is why there is a reform movement within SEIU-I, ltself to take back the locals and return member-driven priorities back to the local level. In conclusion, the issues for the registered nurse in this debate, have gone beyond just what union will represent us in collective bargaining. It is fundamentally, about who will control our practice, our voice as advocates for our patients and who has the will, the spirit, the determination to fight a system that doesn't respect that practice nor our judgement. Unity is a comforting concept but unity at the expense of silencing the voice of the RN as a patient advocate or allowing that practice to be controlled by a system bent on placing us between good nursing judgement and our employers will to save or make money isn't ethical. As Florence would say, "All the results of good nursing, can be undone by one thing and one thing alone, petty management". She understood that concept even in the mid 1800's that management, in what ever form it took, would try and undermine that judgement when allowed too. Therefore, I would invite, those who want unity above all to read the life and work, of the woman we celebrate tomorrow. She has been in the shadows of history far too long. She was a radical, a mystic, an innovator and a militant who fought long and hard to give us the profession we have today. In my opinion, she would relish the debate going on in nursing but in the end support those who would challenge the system itself, the thinkers and the visionaries who want to change our system before it radically, changes us. I thank my colleagues at CNA/NNOC who speak for me and my patients.