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Profile:3 8/15/07 3:39 PM Page 22 Marathon Man RN board member david welch is in the fight to transform healthcare, and nursing, for the long haul. By Lucia Hwang D avid welch, an rn and member of CNA/NNOC's board of directors, always considered himself to hold solidly progressive values and beliefs. During the Vietnam War, as just a high school student protesting the conflict, he and a friend even ran a draft counseling service out of their local church. So when registered nurses at Enloe Medical Center, in Chico, Calif., moved to unionize in 2000, Welch generally supported the effort and would have voted yes. Then hospital management issued a letter trying to dissuade nurses from joining. Welch said the letter was so misleading, full of distortions and half truths about the union, that he became incredibly angry and threw himself headlong into the organizing drive. "The letter sort of converted me all at once from being a moderate supporter into being sort of a fanatic about it," said Welch. "I realized that if it mattered so much to management that they were willing to resort to that, then it had to be important to do it." Organizing Enloe proved to be a battle royal as the hospital brought in anti-union consultants, but the nurses finally prevailed. Welch's involvement grew deeper as he joined the RN bargaining team to negotiate the first contract, and then became the chief nurse rep. By 2003, he wanted to help shape the organization's larger policies and priorities, so ran for and won a seat on the state board of directors. Nursing was a second career for Welch. Or maybe, more accurately, a third, fourth, or fifth career. Out of high school, Welch had worked as a car and bicycle mechanic. He attended college off and on, studying political science and history. In the 1970s, he embraced the "back to the land" "The nurse fighting to be able to give good care settled on the field of cardiac movement and ran a goat dairy rehabilitation, wanting to develin California or the small farmer trying to with his wife for several years. op exercise and education proprotect his way of life, or the workers in a Running the dairy got him intersweatshop in Indonesia trying to have a decent grams for heart disease patients. ested in veterinary medicine and In 1981, Welch started workstandard of living, or the fight to protect the he started training to become environment all over the world are just different ing as a cardiac rehabilitation RN a vet technician. That's when at Enloe Medical Center, and aspects of the same fight: the battle between he realized what he really wantpeople who think that the only value anything he's been there ever since. "It's ed to do was work with people, funny. One of the main reasons I has is its market price, versus the people who not animals. chose nursing was the flexibility think there are higher values than that." Welch enrolled in nursing that it had, and then I end up school at California State University Chico and graduated at age 31. working in one job for one employer," laughed Welch. Even before he finished school, he knew that he wanted to work in Welch credits CNA/NNOC for reviving his political activism. some kind of position that combined nursing with his love of Though he had been very involved in the anti-Vietnam War moveendurance sports such as bicycling and long-distance running. He ment, his enthusiasm "went dormant" for close to 25 years as he 22 REGISTERED NURSE W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G J U LY | A U G U S T 2 0 0 7