National Nurses United

J A N U A R Y | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6 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 11 A s registered nurses, we prioritize the health and safety of our patients and communities every single day. This is the historic social compact between nurses and the communities we serve. Unfortunately, our employees do not prioritize our health and safety with the same diligence—even though we face immense risk every time we walk through the doors of a hospital, clinic, or home of a patient. As a female-dominated profession, we historically have also tended to put our own needs second to our patients'. Blood- borne pathogens; musculoskeletal injuries; needle-sticks and sharps injuries; deadly infectious diseases; hazardous drugs and chemicals; radiation; and assault and violence all pose a clear and present danger to our profession. Taking care of ourselves is essential to our ability as nurses to care for others. The airplane oxygen mask analogy is apt here: Put on your own mask before you start help- ing someone else. That's why as the country's largest and most powerful nurses union, National Nurs- es United is committed to protecting nurses from workplace injuries and illnesses. We are proud to announce that, in addition to the huge amount of legislative, regulatory, and collective bargaining work we already undertake to ensure nurses' well-being, this spring we have launched a new Health and Safety Division to put renewed emphasis, staffing, and resources into these issues. We must take our advocacy for nurses' health and safety to the next level because employers certainly have no interest in doing so. On the contrary, the increasing corporatization of healthcare means employers are speeding up work and cutting corners in our facilities, which in turn trans- lates into greater risks to registered nurses. Our Health and Safety Division is focus- ing on key areas that most affect nurses' health and safety on the job: safe staffing ratios, patient handling, workplace violence, and infectious diseases. NNU has a track record of winning historic protections in each of these areas, including legislation to protect nurses from unsafe staffing levels, Ebola and other infec- tious diseases, workplace violence, and cumulative injuries from patient handling. We will continue to fight in the local, state, and federal legislative and regulatory arenas, at the bargaining table, and through direct action until all nurses have the health and safety protections they deserve. NNU members have also tirelessly advocated to ensure implementation and enforcement of any policy, contract provision, or regulation. This advocacy is necessary when faced with opposition from the healthcare industry, which has fought any and all regulation that improves the safety of our workplaces even in the face of irrefutable evidence that health and safety programs reduce injuries and fatalities. Working with our organization's Nursing Practice, Government Relations, Collective Bargaining, Communications, and Educa- tion and Research programs, the new Health and Safety Division will continue to prioritize the health and safety of our RN members and unrepresented nurses across the country. We have recently hired an industrial hygienist to further complement our work in this area. The professional industrial hygienist's role is to identify and prevent unhealthy exposures that may cause workplace injuries or illnesses. NNU believes that the experience and professional judgment of bedside nurses is the most important input in the creation and implementation of these policies at the workplace, local, state, and federal levels. The hallmarks of all our initiatives— whether legislative, regulatory, or through collective bargaining agreements—include the critical role of safe staffing in health and safety prevention programs; interactive, hands-on training; clearly defined RN role and scope of practice; worker involvement in creating and evaluating the employer's injury/illness prevention plan; stringent documenting and reporting requirements for employers; and prohibitions on discrimi- nation against workers for taking action or filing whistle-blower complaints. As we experienced during the 2014 Ebola epidemic, disregard for the health and safety of nurses has real life-and-death conse- quences. The experiences of our RN colleagues Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, who were asked to care for an Ebola patient without stringent, proven protocols, train- ing, and equipment, starkly illustrate how cavalier American healthcare facilities are about the health and safety of their RN and other healthcare worker staff. Nurses who were infected and survived can suffer from lifelong, debilitating side effects that may affect their ability to practice nursing. Ebola and now Zika, like many healthcare chal- lenges, are ones shared by our nursing colleagues across the world, as we know through our participation in Global Nurses United (GNU). GNU, which we helped form, now consists of 20 nursing and health worker unions from the Americas, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe. We will be sharing our expertise and gaining knowl- edge from these exciting relationships with nurses across the globe. If registered nurses cannot be safe at work, then no one in our facilities and communities is ultimately safe. Look out for more information on our Health and Safety Division programs and for ways you can be educated on and contribute to winning and enforcing protections for all nurses and patients. We do the best for our patients' health and safety, let's do the best for own. Bonnie Castillo, RN, is National Director of Health and Safety and the Registered Nurse Response Net- work for National Nurses United. Bonnie Castillo, RN Safety First It's time for RNs to take their own health and safety as seriously as their patients'

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