Nurses Rally In Washington D.C. For Nurse/Patient Ratio Law, Collective Bargaining Rights

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/13504

Submitted by Doug Cunningham on May 12, 2010 - 3:51pm
Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly versionSend to friendSend to friend

On Capitol Hill, a thousand nurses marched today for increased staffing ratios, collective bargaining rights and for patient care measures they say are missing from the health care reform law. Karen Miller has more from Washington.

OPEN SOUND: singing - “We are the nurses the mighty, the mighty mighty nurses.

Nurses from around the country rallied on the lawn in front of Congress to put their support behind several pieces of legislation making its way through Congress. One of the bills nurses want passed is the National Nursing Shortage Reform and Patient Advocacy Act. The bill establishes minimum nurse, patient ratios for all US hospitals. At the rally nurse Donna Heart from Massachusetts said the change would make a big difference.

: “It would give the ability of the nurse to give the kind of care and the quality of the care that she would like to give. You can’t count on management to do the right thing, to put enough staff when you need them. “

Another bill, the Nursing and Health Care Worker Act of 2010 establishes patient lifting and injury prevention guidelines. Senator Al Franken from Minnesota sponsored that bill.

“We have a nursing shortage, a nursing workforce that is growing older and a country that is unfortunately growing heavier.”

Advocates say even with President Obama signing a health reform bill there’s still work left undone. Charles Idelson is the spokesperson for National Nurses United, a union for registered nurses.

: “The health care bill that was passed is mainly a bill that address access to insurance sadly it does not improve the quality of care or patient safety in our hospitals at all. It is the unfinished business of health care reform”

Nurses also rallied to bring collective bargaining rights to veteran affairs department.

[Loge23]

1. Who could possibly be anti-nursing?

Well, the AMA and the for-profit hospital industry for starters.
The AMA continues to aggressively oppose prescriptive rights for nurses, and limits on prescriptive rights for Advanced Practioners; while the for-profit hospital automatrons basically ignore the core competency of the professional nurse and abuse them by assigning them more patients than a nurse can properly care for. The nurse becomes, basically, a dispensor of (often) poorly-prescribed medications without the authority to change orders. In many cases, nurses are reprimanded for even questioning orders. There have been several court cases that have actually tried nurses for objecting to an MD's orders.
The role of the professional nurse in health care must be expanded and respected if we are to have a real health care reform in this country. The nurses care and prevent, doctors treat.