Decades of inaction and misrepresentation by the American Nurses Association (ANA) has left bedside nurses vulnerable during this deadly pandemic. They parade themselves around as the voice of 4 million nurses but only claim an extremely small minority of that number as card carrying members. Modern nurses, like most working-class citizens, lack widespread unionization and the powerful voice that echoes from its pulpit. Instead, the ANA is representing us on national media outlets with big-medicine shills who wear suits instead of scrubs. These imposters are more concerned with maintaining their cozy relationship with the AMA, AHA, and AHIP than they are with standing up for bedside nurses. Something needs to change.
For years the ANA has opposed nurse led initiatives at the national, state, and local levels. In 2018, they vehemently campaigned alongside corporate interest groups against Massachusetts nurses who bravely fought for safe staffing ratios. They’ve rinsed and repeated this effort across our country with their campfire staffing committee nonsense. Furthermore, for the past decade, the ANA has remained essentially silent as corporations have closed community hospitals in pursuit of profits over quality patient care and equity. These actions and their weak voice on all matters related to bedside work have put nurses in harm’s way.
The ANA has left our community vulnerable and without a powerful and unified voice. Today, as our generation takes its most trying test, we await a financial package from congress that will bail out banks, airlines, hospitals, the liquor industry, and CANDY COMPANIES – but rest assured, nurses will see very little of this. Yet, it’s nurses who will be taking incredible risks – alongside our fellow HCWs – as we care for infectious patients without the proper PPE or benefits to support us and our families should we pay the ultimate sacrifice.
Moreover, there have been an alarming number of stories of how hospitals and the government are working hand over fist to limit your freedom as a nursing professional. From limiting when and where a nurse can wear a mask during an outbreak that is widespread, to Boards of nursing conspiring to ensure nurses have no choice but to subject themselves to exposure regardless of their personal circumstances (see Oregon COVID-19 position statement).
For some, nursing might be a calling; but for EVERYONE, it is a profession. We live in a country where professionals are entitled to proper protection from all workplace hazards. Bet your bottom dollar, that includes infectious particles in a hospital.
For those of us who see nursing as both a profession and a calling, it still isn’t martyrdom. Soldiers enlist to defend our country, firefighters sign up to save souls from burning structures, police patrol to face dangers in our community so that the rest of us are safe. They have guns, oxygen, and handcuffs. Can we just get some godforsaken masks?
There are many issues at play here, and crucifying the ANA won’t solve everything, but I do contend that their disservice is worth mentioning. So, let’s be blunt, the ANA is a big-medicine interest machine that doesn't trouble itself with the issues of nurses who actually work for a living. Through their inaction, misrepresentation, and undermining of nurse activism, they've left us high and dry without a truly powerful voice at the most inopportune time.
Don’t join 'em, Unionize! It won’t solve all of our problems, but for darn sure the future will be better than what we have now.
1. Vote with your money, don’t join the ANA
2. Cancel current memberships
3. Support nursing unionization to whatever degree possible in your state
