National Nurses United

TOC_Layout 1 12/22/10 6:11 PM Page 2 Letter from the Council of Presidents we can hardly believe it's already been a year since the birth of National Nurses United. Happy birthday to us! Like any 1-year-old, we've undergone a period of amazing growth, yet there's still so much development to look forward to ahead. As our executive director, Rose Ann DeMoro, describes in her column in this issue, 2010 has been a simply stellar organizing year for NNU. We won exciting victories in many states where unionization, much less of registered nurses, is not the norm. More than 8,000 nurses in Texas, Nevada, Missouri, Iowa, Washington, D.C., and Florida have all joined NNU and are eager to be a part of the national movement of nurses that we're building for safe staffing, better working conditions, and healthcare justice. We should all be incredibly proud of these organizing victories and do everything we can to keep this momentum going. While revisiting events of this past year, we also need to remember that the world experienced yet another disaster, the massive January earthquake in Haiti. Through NNU's Registered Nurse Relief Network (RNRN), we were able to send some teams of RN volunteers to provide critical care. In this issue, operating room RN Tim Thomas of California recounts the weeks he spent on board the U.S.S. Comfort, a Navy hospital ship docked off Haiti where the most severe surgical cases were sent. But you might not also know that months after the earthquake's initial devastation, after the NATIONAL NURSE,™ (ISSN 2153-0386 print/ISSN 2153-0394 online) The Voice of National Nurses United, December 2010 Volume 106/10 is published by National Nurses United, 2000 Franklin Street, Oakland, CA 94612-2908. It provides news of organizational activities and reports on developments of concern to all registered nurses across the nation. It also carries general coverage and commentary on matters of nursing practice, community and public health, and healthcare policy. It is published monthly except for TV cameras had left and newspapers had dropped Haiti from their headlines, we still had teams of RNRN volunteers on a major medical mission with the Navy, dubbed Continuing Promise, where they gained invaluable experience and on-the-ground training in preparation for the next disaster. Donna Smith reports about Continuing Promise in this issue and what it was like for our RNs to live and work on a military ship for weeks. There are also a number of other fascinating articles in this issue. Don't miss the review of an important book, Can They Do That?, by workers' rights advocate Lewis Maltby. He explains through sometimes shocking, real-life stories how employees typically check their Constitutional rights at the door of their workplaces. The only segment of workers who enjoy any measure of protection are unionized workers covered by a contract. And finally, the Gallup Poll this December again named registered nurses as the most trusted and honest profession out of all those surveyed. We couldn't ask for any nicer gift, or any clearer mandate to keep fighting for those things nurses hold dear: caring, compassion, and community. Deborah Burger, RN | Karen Higgins, RN | Jean Ross, RN National Nurses United Council of Presidents combined issues in January and February, and July and August. Periodicals postage paid at Oakland, California. POSTMASTER: send address changes to National Nurse, 2000 ™ Franklin Street, Oakland, CA 94612-2908. To send a media release or announcement, 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 management 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 Rose Ann DeMoro EDITOR Lucia Hwang GRAPHIC DESIGN Jonathan Wieder COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR Charles Idelson CONTRIBUTORS Gerard Brogan, RN, Hedy Dumpel, RN, JD, Jan Rabbers, Donna Smith, David Schildmeier, Ann Kettering Sincox PHOTOGRAPHY Jaclyn Higgs, Tad Keyes, Lauren Reid

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