Issue link: https://nnumagazine.uberflip.com/i/322740
breathe. So our message to the city council and Rahm Emanuel is this: Don't you dare act as if the people who live in these communities don't matter! Don't you dare allow my patients to continue to suffer and die for the next two years. Not one more person should be allowed to get sick because of petcoke. We need a moratorium, now!" In Washington, D.C., local nurs- es turned out in support of a criti- cal RN staffing ratios bill, the Patient Protection Act, that has stalled before the city council in the face of heavy opposition by the hos- pital industry. Nurses picketed and rallied outside of City Hall, and also delivered to the DC Department of Health, mayor, and council a patient care report documenting at least 215 incidents of unsafe under- staffing at DC-area hospitals over the past 15 months. "Just in the last few weeks, many times I have been forced to care for six patients at a time, three of whom needed a lot of attention. This is unsafe," said Rajani Ward, a medical-surgical RN at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. "We've also had the situation of incon- tinent cancer patients undergoing painful and exhaustive chemotherapy who have been forced to sit in their own waste because there wasn't enough staff to come and change their sheets. And the list goes on and on. It's way past time for the District Coun- cil to pass the Patient Protection Act." In California, nearly 500 nurses traveled to Sacramento to learn about the many ways healthcare corporations and hospitals are undermining safe patient care, from the increasing practice of park- ing patients in observation units for days on end, to the use of healthcare information technology to supplant registered nurses' individual professional judgment and practice. "Goodbye to individ- ual care! Hello to what the computer thinks should be your diagno- sis!" joked Malinda Markowitz, RN and a member of the California Nurses Association Council of Presidents. Markowitz shared a story about her granddaughter who ran a 105-degree fever for two weeks. Despite repeated medical visits, the doctor was reluctant to admit her into the hospital. That afternoon, nurses protested in front of the offices of the Cal- ifornia Hospital Association, the lobbying arm of the state's hospital industry, and visited legislators at their offices to encourage them to pass CNA's package of bills this year. These include legislation aimed at reducing workplace violence for RNs and other healthcare work- ers; requiring nonprofit hospitals to provide real charity care; pro- tect patients from outrageous out-of-network costs; and improve patient safety by reforming hospitals' use of "observation" status. 18 N A T I O N A L N U R S E 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 A P R I L | M AY 2 0 1 4 "When we were breathing, you could feel that the air quality was bad. It was hard to breathe. So our message to the city council and Rahm Emanuel is this: Don't you dare act as if the people who live in these communities don't matter! Don't you dare allow my patients to continue to suffer and die for the next two years. Not one more person should be allowed to get sick because of petcoke. We need a moratorium, now!"