National Nurses United

NewsBriefs Rallying for Ratios in Texas i g h t y e a r s a g o, John Keller's father was recovering from pneumonia in a Texas respiratory rehabilitation center. When he began to improve and breathe on his own, Keller and his mother believed it would be safe to leave the bedside temporarily. Keller left for the day to take a trip and his mother returned to work for several more hours. She had left her husband laughing at the television and breathing on his own, but she came back to find him cold. He had been dead for some time. The nurse call button was six feet away from him. Mother and son were devastated by their loss, but didn't think to question the circumstances. Later Keller married an RN who helped him reinvestigate his father's death. Reviewing his father's records, they learned he had gone three days without seeing an RN. Instead, he was seen by LVNs and respiratory therapists who recorded his distress, anxiety, irritability, and difficulty breathing. Had they known his condition, Keller said he and his mother would never have left. "My wife used to be an LVN before she was an RN and, basically, looking back at the records you could see that [the center] was undertrained and understaffed," Keller said, speaking at a March 27 rally in Texas in support of pending staffing ratio legislation in that state. HB 1707, the Texas Hospital Patient Protection Act of 2007, would limit the num- E 4 REGISTERED NURSE "I'm here for the long haul, for the fight to make sure patients are treated appropriately and nurses who care for those patients are treated appropriately," Coleman said. "And when somebody walks into a hospital in Texas, [they're] walking into a place where they can get good healthcare and walk out knowing that was the best treatment the hospital could provide, they had the appropriate staff, and got good treatment to do well and to recover from the illness they had." The Texas direct-care nurses who spoke at the rally said that in reality, the current protections under "safe harbor" that allow them to speak up against unsafe assignments and inadequate staffing do not always protect them nor prevent unsafe assignments from reoccurring. When Joanne Thompson, a 26-year RN, reported to the director of staffing an unsafe situation where a very sick patient had no ICU bed and the nursing supervisor had not shown up on the floor for 12 hours, she was challenged a week later for an inaccurate report, and for calling "only once" for a bed. "We as nurses need to be able to speak up without fear of repercussion with some means other than in-house committees," said Laura Dominguez, RN. "The need for hospitals and acute-care facilities to put patients first is a necessity." —bonnie ho Hundreds of Texas registered nurses and supporting RNs from around the country rallied and marched on the Capitol Mar. 27 to pass HB 1707, a bill that would establish minimum RN staffing ratios, whistle-blower protections for RNs, and rights to advocate for patients. ber of patients to nurses in addition to providing whistle-blower protections and recognizing the right of RNs to act as patient advocates. "What I see this bill could have done is save my dad's life. It would have [set] a minimum amount of staffing so that [there] would have been somebody there to recognize those signs," said Keller, who added that he was there to represent people from all walks of life who might become patients some day. An airline pilot, Keller also pointed out that his profession established its own minimum ratios and whistleblower protections in 1931 to make sure "safety is the bottom line." Hundreds of Texas nurses and supporting RNs from Illinois, Maine, and California also marched to the Capitol in Austin to promote the bipartisan bill, which is now under consideration by the Public Health Committee. Some 3,000 registered nurses from across Texas have signed a petition in support of the bill. Becky Moeller, Texas AFL/CIO secretarytreasurer, came to rally for quality healthcare in the workplace. The bill's author, State Rep. Garnet Coleman, also spoke. TEXAS W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G APRIL 2007

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