ANSWERING THE CALL
(Continued from page 11)
Both pages clockwise from top left: Kaiser
Permanente RNs fight back against restructuring; Sutter Health RNs in California on the
strike lines; Canadian Federation of Nurses
Unions President Linda Silas, RN, speaks
at Staff Nurse Assembly; Palmetto General
Hospital RNs celebrate first contract; Quincy
Medical Center RNs in Massachusetts also
on strike.
NOVEMBER 2013
people who are dehydrated, malnourished, kids sick with fever.
They need nurses, equipment, and supplies."
"Being able to help people in need is why I went into nursing,"
says University of Michigan RN Tim Launius, a member of the
second delegation who also helped provide medical relief to victims in Texas after Hurricane Katrina. "As an experienced nurse,
I have skills and training that can be put to good use." And he
says his coworkers are covering his shifts for 11 days so he can go
to the Philippines.
It's the commitment of Tim Launius, Michelle Vo, Marti
Smith, Joseph Catindig, and the 3,000 other RNs who have volunteered that have made RNRN into the powerful, irreplaceable
project it has become. And the volunteers not only provide medical support and comfort, they come back transformed, too, into
the activists we so desperately need.
"You think you went there to change peoples lives, but you are
the one who is going to be transformed. You will never see things
the same way again," Catindig says.
This is the experience of almost all of the nurses that go on
these deployments. They come back changed. It is moving and profound. We are very lucky to have people like these in our world.
RoseAnn DeMoro is executive director of National Nurses United.
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
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