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Profile 6/11/06 9:00 AM Page 16 d e b o r a h b u r g e r , r n leads cna/nnoc with a mix of hard work and her own unassuming style. by luc ia hwang Head Nurse H aving just come off a momentous 2005 House of Delegates convention and been reelected CNA/NNOC president, what Deborah Burger, RN is about to confide seems a bit hard to believe. "I never went to the House of Delegates," Burger said of her early years with CNA/NNOC. "All those nurses at the House? I wouldn't have been one of those people even if you twisted my arm." Burger, a diabetes case management RN with Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa, says that the difference between her attitude then and where she is now is a testament to the transformative powers of CNA/NNOC on nurses. "It's about going from your facility and seeing just how things work for you and CNA/NNOC at the local level, and then gradually opening up your eyes and seeing big picture items and how outside government affects" you, your contract, and your patients, said Burger. As she enters the beginning of her second two-year term, Burger reflected on the events that brought her to this point and the future challenges through which she must lead the organization. The biggest obstacles for the profession, as she sees them, are the continual onslaughts by healthcare corporations to erode patient rights and nurse input. For CNA/NNOC, the biggest challenge will be to reach out to nurses nationally in creating a true RN movement for realizing a universal, single-payer healthcare system. The eldest of three girls in a working class family from Sacramento, Burger came of age in the 1960s, when there were basically three career options, outside of being a housewife, for women: teacher, secretary, or nurse. As a kid, she thought it would be fun to be a forest ranger, but career counselors in those days didn't encourage girls down such paths. Ultimately, she chose nursing because it was three years of schooling instead of four. "School was just painful," she remembered. "I did like taking black history and different languages, and I really liked biology. If I had understood that there was a career in marine biology or anthropology, I might have done that." After graduating from City College of San Francisco, Burger got her first permanent job as a medical-surgical RN at Kaiser San Francisco on the night shift. She transferred from there to post partum, then to the intensive care nursery. After she moved to Santa Rosa in 1984, she worked pediatric in the outpatient clinic, then head and neck surgery, and finally diabetes case management, where she works part time now. 16 REGISTERED NURSE Burger's first husband was in the asbestos workers and insulators union, and encouraged her to attend regional or professional practice committee meetings, which she sometimes did. But it wasn't until her first husband died suddenly in 1984 that she became really invested in CNA. Burger asked her manager for a leave of absence, a couple months off so she could serve as his executor and take care of other family business. Her immediate supervisor said yes, but that person's supervisor said no, that Burger needed a better excuse. She appealed to her labor representative, who "stood up for me and made it happen," said Burger. W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G JUNE 2006