National Nurses United

NewsBriefs_NN FNL 2/26/10 5:51 PM Page 11 WRAP-UP REPORT Alison McLeod, RN presents a donation to NNU at an RN Metro Meeting in Tucson, Arizona. The funds came from a settlement McLeod received after being unjustly fired from a local hospital. Arizona after a year-and-a-half-long fight, Alison McLeod, RN, has won a settlement from a hospital that terminated her unfairly and has donated a significant amount of the funds to National Nurses United. "Floating and unsafe staffing were issues I brought up at the Arizona hospital where I worked for eleven years," McLeod writes. "Ultimately I was fired after reporting a physician who hit me with a medical device although the excuse administration used was that I advocated for a patient too sick to speak for herself.  By terminating me, my hospital sought to send a message to any other RN who might dare to speak up.  Instead, they created a determined nurse activist." "I'm donating to NNU because I want to give back to the professional organization which supported me and will work toward making sure that what happened to me does not happen to another nurse." hospitals to demonstrate that the traveling nurses they hire are competent to work in their respective specialties. All the replacement workers are now members of the union. And some of them have discovered how important the union can be when they have received an unfair disciplinary action. SUN is now standing in solidarity with members of the United Steelworkers who are also entering into negotiations with this very anti-union hospital system in one of the poorest areas of the country. Kentucky RNs formed SUN as an independent union in the wake of the strike, after the Kentucky Nurses Association decided that it would no longer support a collective bargaining division. Ohio Kentucky southern united nurses is working to defend RNs targeted for retaliation by Appalachian Regional Hospital management in the aftermath of a 2007 strike over patient care conditions. Four nurses had disciplinary action taken against them for misconduct following the strike at the rural Kentucky hospital system, three were suspended and one was discharged. SUN has won reinstatement for the nurse who was dismissed, but the hospital is refusing to pay the nurse lost time. Meanwhile, SUN negotiated the right of return for all nurses that went out on strike and continues to file grievances over favoritism towards the replacement nurses and the nurses that did not honor the picket lines, who were given preference in jobs and shift assignments. in their first action of 2010, Ohio nurses expanded their campaign around nurseto-patient ratios by issuing a press release criticizing a State Health Department website, Ohio Hospital Compare, which allows consumers to compare Ohio hospitals to each other according to a series of quality indicators. The website provides no information about nurse and hospital worker staffing levels, the nurses pointed out, thereby providing limited and inadequate information to patients and their families concerning the chances of surviving a hospitalization. Cleveland Metro Committee member Michelle Mahon wrote an Opinion piece which was published on www.MedCityNews.com concerning Ohio Hospital Compare. As a result, the Health Department invited nurses to provide testimony about California the california nurses Association/ National Nurses Organizing Committee is supporting several bills in the 2010 state legislative session to advance nursing practice and promote safe patient care. California RNs and patients won a major victory when the state senate passed SB 810, which would establish a single-payer Medicare for all system in the state, in early February; a similar bill is making its way through the Assembly. Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner has reintroduced AB 1994, which recognizes that nurses are vulnerable to occupational injuries like MRSA infection and back problems and provides them with the same presumed eligibility for workers' compensation enjoyed by firefighters and others with dangerous jobs. SB 360 would require JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2010 "Smart Rooms" a Dumb Idea, Say California Nurses The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee has forced the withdrawal of a dangerous bill that would have allowed hospitals to circumvent California's groundbreaking safe staffing law by housing patients in so-called "smart rooms," where beds would have different acuity labels depending on which patient was in them. Critically ill patients, for example, would have been scattered throughout different units rather than grouped together in a dedicated ICU. Nurses bombarded legislators with emails explaining that the proposal would undermine nursing practice, put patients in jeopardy and rob nurses of the ability to specialize. "Nurses go into their respective areas of expertise based on what they are called to do," said Bonnie Castillo, RN, CNA/NNOC Director of Government Relations. "Besides being unsafe, this bill would have allowed legislators and administrators to tell nurses where and how they are going to practice." 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 AT I O N A L N U R S E 11

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