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, July-August-September 2024 (Volume 120/3) 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 gen- eral coverage and commen tary on matters of nursing practice, community and public health, and health care policy. It is pub- lished 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, Lucy Diavolo, Michelle Morris, Chuleenan Svetvilas, Martha Wallner PHOTOGRAPHY Jaclyn Higgs, Tad Keyes, Choppy Oshiro wow! is this an exciting time or what? Of course we're talking about the presi- dential election! Though President Biden had always been a solid supporter of us nurses, of unions, and of the working class, it has been hard this election cycle to get voters to recognize his many accomplishments and generate that BUZZ, that excitement, about his candidacy. Now that Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz are on the ticket, it's like someone grabbed the defibrillator and jolted the progressive electorate back to life! Nurses could not be happier to endorse a champion like Harris for our issues: to center the impor- tance of care work in our economy, to support working people and unions, to work to expand health care, and to fight like hell to restore reproductive rights nationally. National Nurses United members across the country are joyfully volunteering to elect Harris and Walz by texting, phone banking, canvass- ing on their days off, attending rallies, writing postcards, and much, much more. This is crunch time, and we know we all perform well under pressure. We do it every day. As we were thinking about the many, many ways that the previous Trump presidency drastically differed from the Biden-Harris administration and a future Harris-Walz one, we could not help but remember Trump's cavalier and unscientific approach to the Covid-19 pandemic and the irrevocable deaths and damage that caused. That suffering is now embodied in people like Shoharab Chaudhary and Mirasol Streams, two NNU nurse members who now live with the debilitating and career-threatening symptoms of Long Covid. You can read all about their stories in this issue and about the critical health and safety protections against infectious diseases — because new ones are cropping up daily — that NNU is still (and will not stop) fighting for. Because the best protection against Long Covid is to prevent infection in the first place. Lastly, a few of us would like to bid you farewell. Jean, Deborah, and Zenei are retiring in September as members of your NNU Council of Presidents, while Nancy will be staying on for the next term. For those of us stepping down, we just want to say it has been a true honor to serve in this leader- ship capacity, and we are amazed every day by all that you do and all that we accomplish together when we are united in full solidarity. We have the utmost confidence in this next generation of nurse leaders who are coming up and are proud to pass the lamp to them. They'll soon be speaking to you from this very page in the next issue of the magazine. Please give them your full support and don't worry, the three of us will always stay on call. We're nurses after all! Deborah Burger, RN; Nancy Hagans, 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: @NationalNurses FLICKR: www.flickr.com/nationalnursesunited VIMEO: www.vimeo.com/NationalNursesUnited DIGITAL MAGAZINE: NationalNurseMagazine.org

• Cover