National Nurses United

Profile:3 7/9/07 1:25 PM Page 19 During his time helping treat the 70,000 members of the 7th Infantry Division, Marth traveled across California and Texas, sometimes flying air rescue, taking cars off cliffs, and responding to other emergencies along the Monterey coast. He passed the state boards in 1981 and, though still an inactive member of the medical corps, returned to civilian life. He worked briefly for the Veterans Administration, followed by seven years in the ICU at Kaiser Redwood City, then moving to Kaiser Hayward in 1987 where he's stayed since. At Hayward, whose emergency room he describes as a "sweatshop" during the late 1980s, Marth started the slow, long, and arduous process of organizing nurses to demand that management involve them and respect their important role in planning and improving the quality of care provided to patients. "To Kaiser, the nurses were like the furniture in the room," said Marth. At that time, professional practice committees (PPCs) were viewed as just groups of complainers. Nurses were inconsistently filling out assignment despite objection (ADO) forms, and nothing was being done with the data collected. Systemic problems were never addressed. Managers were hostile to Marth and to the union, even scolding him for visiting nurses on other floors when he was serving as chief nurse rep for the hospital. But steadily, through organizing, conditions improved. After the momentous Kaiser strikes of the late 1990s, Kaiser was pushed to establish the Quality Liaison (QL) program under which nurses were tasked with recognizing and proposing solutions to systemic patient care issues. Marth knew right away that being a QL was the ideal job for him, and has served as one since the inception of the program in 1999. After building the program through years of hard work, QLs finally have a forum through which they could participate in decision-making and escalate issues of safety and quality. Running simultaneously during this time were a number of other huge CNA/NNOC campaigns and fights in which Marth was involved. When the organization was lobbying to pass ratios, he collected more than 800 signatures from other healthcare workers who supported the idea but whose unions did not. He helped bargain numerous contracts. He ran for and joined the board of directors in 1995. He's sat on his regional board of directors, and also on various board committees. Marth credits his involvement with CNA/NNOC for evolving his political and social views. Raised in the Bay Area in a family that always had health insurance, he never gave much thought to the have-nots and believed that if you persevered, you'd be able to afford what you needed. But he started noticing hard-working families he knew growing up losing everything they had when some medical catastrophe befell them. "My views have done a 360 degree turn," JUNE 2007 said Marth. "I'm more aware of the social abuse and the politics around healthcare, jobs, working people." The big challenge for CNA/NNOC, says Marth, is staying connected to bedside nurses as the organization grows and becomes an influential player on the national level. He plans to help on his part by continuing to constantly network with nurses. "I have an open door, open phone policy. Hundreds of nurses call me, and I talk to them, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m." he said. "People ask me how I ran this or that campaign. I like to help figure out a problem and put a plan of action in place." I Lucia Hwang is editor of Registered Nurse. Profile W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G Name: Robert Anthony Marth, Jr. Facility: Kaiser Permanente, Hayward Unit: Hospital efficiency, meaning he works on a team of RNs who deal with crises throughout the hospital Nursing for: 26 years On CNA/NNOC board since: 1995 Sign: Aries Pet nursing peeve: When people say,"We've always done it that way" as an excuse for avoiding fixing a problem. Favorite work snack: Coffee, lots of it. Latest work accomplishment: Improving the PPCs and quality forums in Kaiser Hayward and Fremont to the point where they are now self sufficient, and establishing nurse reps on every floor. Color of favorite scrubs: Royal blue Favorite hobbies: Boating and fishing Favorite musician: Dave Mason Latest book read: The Kaiser contract, cover to cover! Secret talent unrelated to nursing: Restoring Alfa Romeo roadsters REGISTERED NURSE 19

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