National Nurses United

I was, reading the book, I realized Brown had done an excellent job in giving readers a taste of actual nursing. While Brown does discuss some of the main challenges all nurses across the United States face in their practice, she does not overtly chal- lenge the mostly for-profit and private hospital systems responsible for these problems, nor point to collective action, such as union organizing, to combat these problems. For example, she talks about understaffing and clearly explains how getting too many patient assignments is not only unsafe, but prevents her from giving her patients the "TLC" they need. She mentions how electronic medical records and electronic charting is actually taking time away from direct patient care when she writes, "the irony right now is the time I spend on the computer careful- ly documenting a patient's fall risk is time I could physically spend in the patient's room talking about how we can work together to keep him upright and on his feet…checklists are not substitutes for care." And Brown uses the opportunity of her not-a-real-break lunch break to describe how hospitals are so understaffed that millions of RNs across the country are entitled each shift to meal-and-break penalty pay. These are all issues that National Nurses United members actively seek to reform through our union organizing, legislative program, and political lobbying, but there is no mention of union work in Brown's book. I would like to think that Theresa Brown is sophisticated enough to know that there are ways to address these problems through col- lective bargaining and organizing, and that many nurses are doing so, but that, for the sake of this book, she wanted simply to show a mass, general audience what nurses do and stick to telling the story. She is definitely critical of the system, but limits her role to observer and not to fixer. Perhaps she is trying to first get the public on the side of nurses (though they already are) and letting readers draw their own conclusions about the root of these problems. But it would have been nice to have her acknowledge in some small way the work of union nurses in pursuing RN-to-patient staffing ratios and fight- ing back against these industry practices that hurt patient care. Still, Brown's book is a great contribution to the public's under- standing of nursing and depicts nurses as the caring, smart, capable, but also human and fallible people they are. The book is also full of lively dialogue and description, so is a pleasure and breeze to read. All nurses would really enjoy it.—lucia Hwang CARING FOR MOM & DAD PBs documentary, available to watch at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/caringformomanddad/watch/ In this poignant PBs documentary that aired this spring, filmmakers explore perhaps one of the biggest conundrums facing children of aging and babyboomer parents today: How to care for mom and dad when they can no longer take care of themselves, who will do it, and how the heck will we pay for it? it's a sobering question with no clear answer. the documentary profiles various adult children in differ- ent situations. one woman devotes herself full time to caring for her invalid mother and is at least able to be paid as an in- home supportive aide to do it. one man is driven almost to suicide by the stress of caring for his elderly mother. another young woman had to give up a promising political career to care for a parent with early-onset alzheimer's. another is part of the "sandwich generation," who gets caught between car- ing for aging parents as well as her own children. it's very clear, very quickly, that as a society, the united states does not value the elderly nor caregiving work, and provides almost no support for older americans to age with dignity. yes, thank god there is Medicare, but Medicare does not pay for long-term care and all the incidental, but critical, supportive services that people need on a day-to-day basis to maintain healthy and happy lives. as one adult child said, "People over 65 have healthcare if they need a heart trans- plant, and they don't if they need a home health aide, or assisted living, or a nursing home. you have to pay for all of that yourself…there are many scenarios where by the time this is over, Mom and dad are broke, and so are you." the documentary notes that adult children are increasingly taking on responsibility for medical services that would normal- ly be provided by nurses. it also notes that the vast majority of caregivers to the elderly are women who lose out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in income over their lifetimes to care for parents, and themselves age into poverty for this very reason. one forward-thinking community in southwestern ohio 25 years ago passed a property tax levy that raises about $41 million a year to help about 14,000 seniors not eligible for Medicaid to receive services, such as a home health aide to come get them dressed, make breakfast, sort out and remind them to take their medications, and socialize with them. this allows thousands of seniors to live safely in their homes who might otherwise not be able to do so. Besides the southwestern ohio example, the documen- tary doesn't offer many other solutions to this national dilemma. it's clear that we, as a country, need to reprioritize our resources and shift funds away from wall street, corpo- rate profits, and the ultra-wealthy into meeting such press- ing human needs through legislation such as the robin Hood tax. if we don't, all of us will soon find ourselves in the same situation as those people featured in the documen- tary, if we aren't already. —lucia Hwang j u ly | a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 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 a t i o n a l n u r s e 21

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