National Nurses United

NATIONAL NURSE,™ (ISSN 2153-0386 print /ISSN 2153-0394 online) The Voice of National Nurses United, November 2014 Volume 110/7 is pub- lished by National Nurses United, 2000 Franklin Street, Oakland, CA 94612- 2908. It provides news of organizational activities and reports on developments of concern to all registered nurses across the nation. It also carries general cover- age and commen tary on matters of nurs- ing practice, community and public health, and healthcare policy. It is pub- lished monthly except for combined issues in January and Febru- ary, and July and August. Periodicals postage paid at Oakland, California. POSTMASTER: send address changes to National Nurse, ™ 2000 Franklin Street, Oakland, CA 94612-2908. To send a media release or announce- ment, fax (510) 663-0629. National Nurse™ is carried on the NNU website at www.nationalnursesunited.org. For permission to reprint articles, write to Editorial Office. To subscribe, send $40 ($45 foreign) to Subscription Department. Please contact us with your story ideas They can be about practice or manage- ment trends you've observed, or simply something new you've encountered in the profession. They can be about one nurse, unit, or hospital, or about the wider landscape of healthcare policy from an RN's perspective. They can be humorous, or a matter of life and death. If you're a writer and would like to contribute an article, please let us know. You can reach us at nationalnurse@nationalnursesunited.org EXECUTIVE EDITOR RoseAnn DeMoro EDITOR Lucia Hwang GRAPHIC DESIGN Jonathan Wieder COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR Charles Idelson CONTRIBUTORS Gerard Brogan, RN, Hedy Dumpel, RN, JD, Jan Rabbers, Donna Smith, David Schildmeier, Ann Kettering Sincox PHOTOGRAPHY Jaclyn Higgs, Tad Keyes, Choppy Oshiro thanks to all of us regis- tered nurses across the coun- try, one state in the nation, California, now has mandatory, enforceable Ebola equipment and training safety standards that are actually higher than what the federal Centers for Disease Control and Preven- tion recommends. It is a momentous victory that would not have happened without National Nurses United RNs. We have been agitating and speaking out in public and the media for months, all of which culminated in a worldwide "Day of Action on Ebola" Nov. 12. Nurses across the country and even in the Philippines and Australia staged an amazing array of powerful events to protest the hospital industry's bla- tant disregard of public health in favor of their bottom lines, and also shame the politicians and government officials who fail to challenge the industry on this issue. We shouldn't have had to fight this hard but, like many patient advocacy causes nurses undertake, we really had no choice, did we? Our own lives, our families' lives, our patients' and neighbors' lives were on the line. In this issue, read all about California's new regulations and how the next step is to enforce those rules and get them adopted nationwide. When NNU throws a protest, we go big. So of course the Nov. 12 actions also coincided with strikes by a total of more than 20,000 nurses across California and in Washington, D.C. Some 18,000 nurses and nurse practitioners who work for Kaiser Permanente walked off the job for the first time in many years. For them, Kaiser's failure to adequately prepare and pro- tect them against Ebola is just symptomatic of the corporation's failure to prioritize safe patient care and, instead, cut nursing and other staff, cut services, cut units, and push patients out of the hospital into outpatient or home settings. All this from a company that makes about $12 million in profits per day. Nurs- es from Sutter Tracy Community Hospital, Watsonville Com- munity Hospital, and Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C. also went on strike over similar patient care concerns. Lastly, there's a really fascinating piece in this issue that discusses the art and science of nursing assessments and whether we are all honing or losing that skill. Since the begin- ning of this year, we've been doing a series of "conversations" with Kay McVay, a longtime Kaiser ICU RN and president emeritus of the California Nurses Association. Kay is a treas- ure, both for all she has done for the nursing profession and also for all the nursing history and knowledge she carries. In this issue, Kay discusses what goes into a proper patient assessment and questions whether, with overreliance on health technology as well as chronic understaffing, we are doing right by our patients. It's some serious food for thought. Deborah Burger, RN | Karen Higgins, RN | Jean Ross, RN National Nurses United Council of Presidents Letter from the Council of Presidents Stay connected FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/NationalNurses TWITTER: @RNmagazine, @NationalNurses FLICKR: www.flickr.com/nationalnursesunited YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/NationalNursesUnited DIGITAL MAGAZINE: NationalNurseMagazine.org

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