National Nurses United

NATIONAL NURSE,™ (USPS publication permit number 0807-560/ISSN 2153- 0386 print/ISSN 2153-0394 online) The Voice of National Nurses United, October- November-December 2021 (Volume 117/4) is published by National Nurses United, 155 Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA 94612- 2908. It provides news of or ganizational activities and reports on developments of concern to all registered nurses across the nation. It also carries general coverage and commen tary on matters of nursing prac- tice, community and public health, and health care policy. It is published quarterly, with combined issues in January-February- March (winter), April-May-June (spring), July-August-September (summer), and October-November-December (fall). Periodicals postage paid at Oakland, California. POSTMASTER: send address changes to National Nurse, ™ 155 Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA 94612-2908. To send a media release or announce- ment, fax (510) 663-0629. National Nurse™ is carried on the NNU website at www.nationalnursesunited.org. For permission to reprint articles, write to Editorial Office. To subscribe, send $40 ($45 foreign) to Subscription Department. Please contact us with your story ideas They can be about practice or manage- ment trends you've observed, or simply something new you've encountered in the profession. They can be about one nurse, unit, or hospital, or about the wider landscape of healthcare policy from an RN's perspective. They can be humorous, or a matter of life and death. If you're a writer and would like to contribute an article, please let us know. You can reach us at nationalnurse@nationalnursesunited.org EXECUTIVE EDITOR Bonnie Castillo, RN EDITOR Lucia Hwang GRAPHIC DESIGN Jonathan Wieder COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR Sarah Cecile CONTRIBUTORS Rachel Berger, Amelia Dornbush, Charles Idelson, Kari Jones, Lauren Nielsen, Chuleenan Svetvilas PHOTOGRAPHY Jaclyn Higgs, Tad Keyes, Choppy Oshiro we saw an online meme the other day that made us laugh so hard. "I can't believe it is Omicron season already! I still have my Delta decorations up," the post read. That one joke pretty much sums up all the complicated, conflicting feelings so many of us are having about work, life, society, and the closeout of 2021 in the middle of a pan- demic that just won't quit. The absurdity of it all, our abject failure to stop the Covid-19 virus, observance of the fall and winter holidays and the inexorable passage of time, and people's attempts at integrating this unprecedented pan- demic into some sense of a normal life are captured so perfectly. After another awful year of this pandemic, we all need some laughs. We nurses know humor is one of the main ways we cope with the heavy parts of our profession. Thank goodness that as union nurses, we have another outlet: We fight for what's right with our collective power. And that's exactly what we did in 2021. If 2020 was a year of chaos and unknowns, 2021 was the year that our hospital employers intentionally shifted to capitalize off the pandemic by trying to make permanent the crisis standards of care we were all forced into by their failure to prepare for Covid-19 and follow the precautionary principle. But there were bright spots in the year. We finally elected a president who took science and what it took to fight the virus seriously. It took longer than we liked, but we won the first Occupational Safety and Health Administra- tion emergency temporary standard since 1983 when the Biden administration issued the ETS on Covid-19 in June. Vaccines rolled out in a big way in the spring, and were finally made available to 5 to 11-year-olds in November. Our NNU members successfully bargained dozens of contracts this year, winning new standard-setting language for health and safety protections and combating racism and inequities in our workplaces and in health care. And it's clear we still have so much to do. Staffing is worse than ever. We all knew it felt inherently unfair to be getting booster shots when millions of people around the world still have no access to a first dose. And our fight against health care corporate greed, which prolongs this disease pandemic, knows no end. The United States is still logging well more than 100,000 new cases daily. We will never stop fighting for our patients, for human dignity, and for a world based on caring, not profit. Deborah Burger, RN | Jean Ross, RN | Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, RN National Nurses United Presidents Letter from the NNU presidents Stay connected FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/NationalNurses TWITTER: @RNmagazine, @NationalNurses FLICKR: www.flickr.com/nationalnursesunited VIMEO: www.vimeo.com/NationalNursesUnited DIGITAL MAGAZINE: NationalNurseMagazine.org

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