National Nurses United

NATIONAL R egistered nurses who work at Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals around the country, from New York to Ohio to North Carolina to Florida, held a national week of action in August. The nurses, who are represented by National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC), are calling on the VA to lift what is in effect a hiring freeze that has contributed to more than tens of thousands of vacancies across the health system, including thou- sands of RN positions. RNs say the freeze is putting patient safety at risk and under- mines the VA's commitment to providing veterans with high-quality, integrated, vet- eran-specific care that only the VA has the experience and expertise to provide. "Last August, the Tampa VA opened up a beautiful new tower with 136 beds, but we have not seen that investment in staffing, even as we're in a crisis," said Justin Wooden, RN in the intensive care unit (ICU) at James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital in Tampa, Fla. "Right now, our ICU nurses are being pulled to units across the hospital, responding to medical emergencies. Meanwhile, we're missing critical staff like transport teams and nursing assistants in the ICU. Too often, nurses are being asked to work in units with specialized patient populations whom they don't have experience with. These stopgap measures are not safe for our patients and undermine their care." According to the VA's own inspector general, 82 percent of VAs are experienc- ing critical nurse shortages. Some of the hardest-hit patient care areas include ICUs, units where the sickest patients receive lifesaving care. Due to the hiring freeze that has been in effect since Jan. 30 of this year, there are not enough RNs to cover patients coding, rapid responses, or routine transportation and testing needs. Due to the short staffing in the critical care units, RNs without critical care specializa- tions are being floated there. As a result of short staffing, beds in these units are clos- ing, limiting patient care for veterans. "In our medical-surgical and intensive care units we're seeing critical shortages because management made a unilateral decision to move our specialized float pool RNs elsewhere," said Shana Rivera, RN in the ICU at Cincinnati VA Medical Center in Ohio. "Losing those specialized floating nurses challenges our ability to safely fill staffing gaps and provide the quality patient care that our veterans deserve." "We know we at the VA are best qualified to care for our nation's veterans," said Irma Westmoreland, RN at Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta, Ga., and NNU vice president and Veterans Affairs chair. "That's why we need the resources to pro- vide care that honors their services and their sacrifices. When we don't have enough staff, we are effectively cutting services to our vet- erans. That is why we are calling on the VA to lift this hiring freeze, so we can get back to providing holistic, specialized, veteran- centric care to our nation's heroes." NNOC/NNU represents more than 15,000 registered nurses at 23 VHA facili- ties across the country, many of whom are veterans themselves. —Staff report 45 public health, occupational health, and patient advocacy organizations, collectively representing more than 6 million members across the country, to the CDC/HICPAC urging them to fully recognize aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and other res- piratory pathogens and to strengthen the CDC's Isolation Precautions guidance. On Nov. 3, 2023, NNU condemned HIC- PAC's unanimous vote to finalize a draft of infection control guidelines before giving the public ample time to review the draft or before seeking input from health care work- ers and patients, whose health and safety would be directly impacted by this guidance. NNU urged the CDC to reject HICPAC's draft and to actively engage the input of frontline nurses, other health care workers, their unions, patients, and public health experts, in addition to infection prevention- ists, in the development of a new draft of the updated guidance. On Nov. 29, 2023, NNU President Jean Ross, RN and Jane Thomason, NNU's lead industrial hygienist publish an opinion piece, "CDC Advisors' Infection Control Guidance Leaves Us Unprotected," about the HIPAC vote to finalize the draft guidance. On Jan. 17, 2024, NNU's ninth national survey of nurses finds that only 61.2 percent of hospital nurses report wearing a respira- tor for every encounter with a Covid-positive patient, despite ample scien- tific evidence that a respirator is necessary personal protective equipment (PPE). On Jan. 23, 2024, NNU applauded the CDC for rejecting HICPAC's draft infection control guidance and sending it back to resolve some significant issues in the draft. On April 4, 2024, NNU delivered a peti- tion, signed by more than 5,600 individuals, commending CDC Director Mandy Cohen for rejecting HICPAC's problematic draft and urging CDC to ensure all necessary per- spectives are added to HICPAC and its workgroup, including frontline health care workers, unions, patients advocates, and other public health experts. On May 6, 2024, Lisa Baum, lead occu- pational safety and health representative at NNU affiliate NYSNA, was invited to join HICPAC. On May 10, 2024, Jane Thomason, NNU lead industrial hygienist, was invited to join the HICPAC workgroup. —Chuleenan Svetvilas VA nurses across country fight for safe staffing, protest hiring freeze J U LY | A U G U S T | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 4 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 9

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