cinnia

First--let me explain my background. I am a Respiratory Therapist, presently in school full time finishing pre-requistes for degree. Considering nursing....although when I read the postings I really wonder if I'm nuts to do so... 20 years experience as RT in ICU, including 10yrs in management. Here are my 2 cents worth: If repeated falls are occuring: Call the complaint line for Medicare/Medicaid. Call OSHA--tell them that the conditions are not only unsafe for patients but unsafe for the health of the workers (over-working & short staffing increases the risk of serious back injuries when there aren't enough people to help lift pts). You can do this anoymously OR you can actually have a friend do it for you... this does work as I did it once. You need the dates, shifts, number of times falls happened, etc. (as advised by someone in a previous post). Secondly, If you choose to do this you CAN NOT tell anyone. There are no secrets if 2 people know... This will prevent management from being able to identify how they suddenly have OSHA & HICFA doing an onsite active unannounced survey... Obviously you don't want to be verbalizing all your dissatisfaction to other staff members if you choose to do this... Lastly--regarding unions & the South... I live in Texas and despite what is said about it being "illegal" to fire people desiring to start a union or be a member...I have seen it happen at hospitals. Why? Because Texas and many other states in the South are call "employee at will". This means that the laws governing buisness regard employees as free will agents. Although seldom done due to discriminations laws...you literally can be terminated immediately without notice as to cause (i.e. why). This is usually with 2 weeks pay and a promise to give you a decent recommendation... Obviously, unions would interfere with this, increase the cost of labor and diminish the control administration has over staff/labor. Why is this attractive? It is to buisness. No union rules or disputes to hassel with, power over labor, keeps hiring cost down and is very attractive when you want to attract buisnesses to your state... there is a good reason that Dallas & Houston have a large number of home offices for mulit-billion $ corporations. Interesting note: the Medical Center in Houston is the largest (in one place) of it's kind in the world. It employees over 50,000 workers...and there are NO unions present in the hospitals. Technologically we're in the 21st centuary, healthcare workers are slightly above open slavery. I can say that in most of the large hospitals in the Medical Center that Nurses have banded together and actually have some (compared to the past) pull regarding over-work. Nurses in Texas are still in demand... and the hospitals finally realized it was cheaper to do a few things to try to keep people at least minimally tolerant of the working conditions versus paying for agency nurses and/or being totally unable to recruit because of they (the hospital) have a bad rep. for their tx of nurses.