National Nurses United

"There is really no healthcare system in America," said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of CNA, at the event. "There's just independent profiteers. When we tried to organize volunteers, we saw the problem of having a fragmented healthcare economy." Sybil Howell, an RN from Chicago who works for the Cook County Bureau of Health Services, stressed that without a national healthcare system that treats everybody fair- ly and makes decisions in the public interest, the poor will always suffer while those with more resources will continue to use more of those resources. In the event of an outbreak, "there's not enough medication for all of us," she said. "The chosen group will get it." Throughout the day, which included a continuing education class examining the larger political and social factors exacerbat- ing the Katrina disaster and a dinner pro- gram recognizing the volunteers, nurses told hundreds of stories about the hurricane sur- vivors' lack of access to healthcare. Many attendees raised their hands when asked if they were present at a first diagnosis of diabetes, hypertension, or asthma. One nurse said he was shocked by the amount of medications that the medical staff needed to distribute. Another said she was baffled that almost half the patients she saw were HIV positive, yet nobody was on anti-viral drugs, nor did any seem to be available on site or in the city where she was working. One pointed out that at one shelter where she and some colleagues volunteered to give vaccinations to children, the shots were not so much to help the kids protect against any current dis- ease outbreak, but merely to "catch them up" on their immunizations because New Orleans children were so under immunized. Other nurses were stunned by the preju- dice and racism that permeated the attitudes of some healthcare providers they encoun- tered in the South. Charlotte Ballenger, an ER nurse at Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa, said she believes one emergency department's lack of attention to a poor black man's complaints of chest pains led to his needless death. Not only was the man diabetic, he was a bilateral amputee. "In my ER, he'd come right back," said Ballenger. "But the first thing this nurse manager did was call him a 'troll' and send him out to the waiting room. He didn't have to die. And the attitude is it's okay because that's the way it's always been. That haunts me." The consensus of the day seemed to be that everyone deserved equal standards of healthcare and nurses were going to help lead that fight. "It's time for us to stand up and be active," said Foxen. "You can make a difference. We can make history. You just have to start somewhere and risk some- thing." —staff report A P R I L 2 0 0 6 W W W . C A L N U R S E S . O R G C A L I F O R N I A N U R S E 5 AT LEFT, RNs Sandra Delgadillo, Martha Kuhl, (unidentified), Betty Hemphill, Sharry Carranza, and two unidentified nurses stand proudly at the press conference. Above, NICU RN Diane Foxen shares stories about volunteering at a Baton Rouge hospital. At right, executive director Rose Ann DeMoro applauds while president Deborah Burger, RN accepts a Senate resolution thanking CNA/NNOC for its Katrina work.

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