National Nurses United

NewsBriefs_MAy 6/2/11 3:11 PM Page 7 University Division RNs Hold First National Conference NATIONAL ore than 28,000 of National Nurses United's registered nurses work at medical centers owned and run by universities and other academic institutions across the country. This March, they gathered in Chicago for NNU's first-ever university division conference to discuss their common challenges and goals, learn what kinds of trends are happening at their hospitals, and strategize about how to unify and boost the power of RNs working for university facilities. "We were all struck by the fact that the universities are really in many ways behaving like for-profit corporations," said Patricia Eakin, an emergency room RN at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia and president of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals. "They take advantage of their academic reputation and their high regard in the community, but when you scratch the surface, most of them are pretty vicious." Many university facilities are teaching hospitals, so nurses and other healthcare providers often expect that they will be supported in providing higher levels of patient care and patient education. But attendees know that this is not the case. University M M AY 2 0 1 1 hospitals, whether connected to private or public institutions of higher learning, are actively seeking to increase revenue by wooing more profitable patients and cut costs by understaffing. "You expect a different environment and intelligent use of resources, but instead, we find these hospitals reducing services for the populations they're serving," said Eakin. "And they're saving money by not wanting to invest in the nursing workforce and by going after our contract standards." Eakin said she and her coworkers were shocked during their last round of contract negotiations when the university proposed a "gag clause" that would have prohibited the nurses from criticizing the hospital. As an institution devoted to discourse and learning, she remembered pointing out the hypocrisy of the proposal, but the university's negotiator said that if they wanted free speech, "they should go someplace else." The clause was rejected. In another example, University of Chicago Medical Center RNs held a candlelight vigil during the conference to protest what they say is their employer's practice of constantly diverting low-income emergency room patients onto Stroger Hospital, an already overburdened public facility. Late last year, it was reported that UCMC already had the highest rate of diversions in Chicago, closing its doors to ambulances on average 22 percent of the time. UCMC also 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 paid a $50,000 fine last year to settle a complaint that it violated federal law after a 78-year old patient died following a wait of nearly four hours without care in the UCMC emergency department. In continuing education classes presented at the conference, RNs also had the opportunity to learn about ways in which their employers are banking on their academic reputations to make forays into fields such as medical tourism, and how the research agendas of these facilities are often influenced by financial partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry. "A lot of academic facilities are really pushing their prestige and going the extra mile for cosmetics, but not the clinical," said Dawn Peckler, an operating room RN at University of Chicago Medical Center. NNU and its affiliates represent more than 28,200 RNs at the following academic systems: 4,000 RNs at University of Michigan; 12,000 RNs at University of California; 1,000 at University of Minnesota; 1,500 at University of Massachusetts; 2,100 RNs at Temple University; 700 RNs at University of Southern California (USC); 1,100 at Tufts University; 600 RNs at Boston University; 3,200 RNs at Brigham and Women's Hospital (a teaching affiliate of Harvard University); 700 RNs at Howard University; and 1,300 at University of Chicago. —Staff report N AT I O N A L N U R S E 7

• Cover