tegory=NEWS&ArtNo=109050042&Ref=AR>
Stephen Breen, The Royal Gazette, September 5. 2002
Nurses at the Island's two hospitals have given notice to strike over claims
that management has reneged on promises to improve pay and working
conditions. It is also understood nurses are angry that they have been
working without a collective bargaining agreement for 11 months, and they say
management has not honoured verbal agreements over pay and conditions from
more than a year ago. Bermuda Public Services Union (BPSU), which represents
nurses and allied medical staff at the King Edward VII Memorial and St.
Brendan's hospitals, has given the Labour Relations Office a 21 day strike
notice, the union confirmed yesterday. ...
RD:10043>
Hospital Employees' Union (CUPE), September 6, 2002
The union representing most BC care aides and licensed practical nurses is
demanding an apology from health services minister Colin Hansen after he
referred to their role in providing quality patient care as "menial" on a
Vancouver radio station Friday. And the Hospital Employees' Union (CUPE) says
the minister's comments clearly indicate that he doesn't understand the link
between "non-nursing duties" and bedside nursing care. ...
California moves closer this month to becoming the first state in the nation
to set mandatory minimum nurse-to-patient staffing ratios for hospitals.
Gov. Gray Davis issued proposed regulations for staffing ratios identical to
his draft plan unveiled in January. The Office of Administrative Law will
publish rules by Oct. 18 that would enable nurses on general medical and
surgical wards, for example, to treat no more than five patients each.
A 45-day comment period will follow, with hearings planned in Los Angeles,
San Francisco and Fresno. The law is expected to take effect Jan. 1, 2004.
29_L02219_Nursing_package.html>
California Department of Health Services, September 29, 2002
Governor Gray Davis took sweeping action today to improve California's
nursing care and ease the state's nursing shortage by issuing proposed
regulations to establish the nation's first nurse-to-patient ratios,
allocating $21.1 million to train and recruit nurses and by signing two bills
to improve nursing education. "These moves make California a national leader
in nursing and patient care," Gov. Davis said. "They address the quality of
patient care and help meet the nursing workforce needs of the 21st century."
The Governor's Nursing Workforce Initiative grants will fund 13 regional
partnerships to put nearly 2,000 nurses into the workforce. The initiative
incorporates both short-term and long-term measures to recruit, train, and
retain a culturally diverse nursing workforce to meet the state's health care
needs. ...
California Nurses Welcome Release of Ratio Regulations
Critical Step To Improve the Health of California
<http://www.calnurses.org/cna/press/92902.html>
California Nurses Association, September 29, 2002
The California Nurses Association today welcomed the release of the formal
regulations kicking off the next phase of implementation of the nation's
first minimum nurse to patient ratios. CNA, which sponsored the landmark Safe
Staffing Law, said it will work with state officials to ensure the law is put
into practice, monitored and enforced to protect patient safety and to
guarantee all Californians have access to a registered nurse when they need
hospital care. CNA is the largest organization of RNs in California, with
45,000 members in 150 facilities across the state, and campaigned for 10
years to enact the law. ...
Canada:
Violence, Bargaining, Patient Ratio Discussed At International Forum
<http://www.nursesunions.ca/na/index.shtml>
Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, October 2, 2002
The International Council of Nurses (ICN) meets annually to discuss common
nursing problems and solutions. This years meeting saw participation from
nursing leaders representing North America, Europe and Asia. Their Workforce
Forum was held in mid-September in beautiful Iceland, where CFNU was
represented by CFNU President Kathleen Connors, RN. From the President's
notes, the Forum discussed:
.Developments in nurses pay and working conditions were discussed. There is a
shortage of nurses everywhere except Hong Kong. The issues of workload,
overtime, foreign recruiters, increasing privatization are clearly
international;
.Discussion on the move by Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland to more individual
bargaining was spirited. The Nordic country unions negotiate a basic wage
rate and then assists individuals to negotiate supplementary increase (about
3%) of total salary. It sounded like merit pay to CFNU. The Swedish Union
reported that their experience in bargaining with the private-for-profit
sector has been a positive one. Words of extreme caution were expressed by
many other participants from around the world;
.Violence remains an issue for all. Various international organizations
including ICN have developed framework guidelines to address violence in the
health care sector;
.These groups are interested in piloting the guidelines in a handful of
countries. CFNU and its Member Organizations should consider providing
Canadian workplaces as pilots for the application of their framework
guidelines;
.Spirited discussion occurred around issues related to current workload
measurement tools and nurse-patient ratios. According to ICN, the Australian
experience in Victoria and West Australia has improved morale and decreased
the illness and absenteeism rates for nurses;
.Pension/retirement discussion provided insight into moves in Europe to
increase retirement age and punish those who retire early;
.Political activism leadership is active everywhere, but members tend to be
less so; and
.Issues that were identified as priorities for discussion in 2003 include the
increasing accusation and punishment of nurses, workplace representatives,
workload and nurse-patient ratios.
Connecticut:
Nurses Lash Out At Rowland
Some Say Politics Motivated Rally
Hilary Waldman, Hartford Courant, September 13, 2002
A noisy group of state-employed nurses, angry about long hours and mandatory
overtime, brought their gripes to Gov. John G. Rowland's driveway in Hartford
Thursday. But Rowland's office said they had come to the wrong place.
Connecticut, like the rest of the nation, is caught in a nursing shortage
that has made it difficult for many hospitals and other health care providers
to find enough help. Over the last several years, Rowland's office said, the
state government has tried to help replenish the field by sponsoring job
fairs and by supporting nurse training programs, refresher courses and
distance-learning opportunities to attract new nurses and bring disaffected
veterans back to the bedside. ...
Union reps and Howard University Hospital officials reached a tentative
agreement Sunday, narrowly avoiding a midnight strike deadline. About 400
union-represented employees at the hospital, the majority of which are
nurses, were prepared to go on strike by midnight Sunday if an agreement on a
new collective bargaining agreement couldn't be reached between negotiators
and administration. A hospital administrator says the agreement involves a
retroactive pay adjustment. The DC Nurses Association says six days of
bargaining were held in July to reach an agreement, but that Howard
management only showed up to one. The old collective bargaining agreement
expired June 30. The 400 workers include nurses, pharmacists, dietitians and
social workers. ...
Members of the Irish Nurses Organisation are to begin industrial action
against the Dublin Institute of Technology at 8 am this morning. The dispute
centres over the alleged refusal of the DIT to furnish four long-term
temporary nursing staff with permanent contracts. ...
More than 3,000 riot police stormed two hospitals in Seoul early yesterday
morning in separate raids to break up unionized workers who had been staging
long-running strikes over pay and working conditions. Police said they hauled
away 326 striking unionists from Kangnam St. Mary's Hospital in southern
Seoul and 165 unionized employees from Kyung Hee University Medical Center in
the northern part of the capital. The unionized workers were taken to 21
police stations across the capital for questioning, they said. ... Five
leaders of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, a progressive umbrella
labor group, were also hauled away while protesting the police action. ...
Massachusetts:
Study ties crowded ERs to surgeons' scheduling
Anne Barnard, Boston Globe, September 5, 2002
Several Boston-area hospitals are quietly investigating a surprising reason
behind the emergency-room overloads that sometimes force them to turn
ambulances away: surgeons' traditional freedom to set their own operating
schedules without regard to hospital capacity. Over the past two years, as
emergency-room closures have become an urgent problem in Massachusetts and
elsewhere, health officials have blamed many factors, from a shortage of
hospital beds to unpredictable surges in overcrowding. But some hospital
administrators are realizing that the problem may not be entirely beyond
their control. Rather, they may be able to make a dent in it by smoothing out
steep peaks and valleys in the daily number of surgeries. 'It's in our power
to schedule them better, but we don't,'' said Eugene Litvak, a Boston
University management theorist who recently studied hospital overcrowding.
Litvak's team found that emergency rooms jam up not when patients swarm in,
but when a lack of available hospital beds keeps them from flowing out - a
problem fueled by huge day-to-day swings in the number of patients staying in
the hospital. And from studies of two local hospitals and 10 others, the
researchers concluded that these swings come mainly from unevenly scheduled
elective surgeries, not from random variation in emergency arrivals - a
result that surprised even Litvak, who said, ''It's against common sense.''
... Not everyone agrees with all the researchers' conclusions. Even Litvak's
team concedes that affecting surgeons' schedules - which usually must
accommodate office hours, teaching, and other responsibilities - must be done
sensitively. And hospital officials point out that tinkering with schedules
alone will not solve problems that started when Massachusetts lost a third of
its hospital beds in the 1990s. But in recent weeks, two hospitals - Boston
Medical Center and Holy Family Hospital in Methuen - have agreed to let the
researchers study their scheduling flow and promised to implement any
''reasonable'' recommendations. Some hospitals have already made changes and
are considering more. ... One Wisconsin hospital, inspired by earlier reports
from the BU group, experimented with a radical way to limit crowding -
allowing nurses to close the ICU when they deemed it overcrowded, even if
that meant surgeons had to cancel scheduled surgeries. (Ed.: Emphasis added.)
At first, surgeons were angry, said Dr. Roger Resar, an official at Luther
Hospital in Eau Claire, Wisc., part of the Mayo Health System, who has the
ambitious title of ''change agent.'' But then the results started to surprise
them. Before the new policy, the emergency department had been turning away
patients 12 percent of the time due to ICU bed shortages. That figure dropped
to 2.8 percent. Resar asked cardiologists and heart surgeons to track dollars
being lost to their practice because they could not admit intensive-care
patients. The number dropped from $200,000 a month to $50,000. At the same
time, the hospital went from a 10 percent nursing vacancy rate to 2 percent,
defying the national nursing shortage - a change administrators attribute to
nurses being more satisfied and more in control. Resar gave a talk to
hospital administrators at a Department of Public Health conference early
this year. Some were skeptical that lessons from rural Wisconsin could apply
to Boston. ''It's like comparing Pluto to Mars,'' said Jeffrey Doran, vice
president of the Lahey Clinic. The BU team recommends hospitals try a more
modest approach. Rather than give nurses veto power, the team suggests
preempting the problem by scheduling more evenly in advance. Alan Woodward,
director of Emerson Hospital's emergency department and a longtime crusader
on the emergency diversion issue, said that implementing such ideas at a few
hospitals is an important step. 'The next step is to see how effective it is,
how disruptive is it, and how much of the problem still has to be solved by
adding more beds,'' he said. Any redesign of scheduling practices will have
to dovetail with significant reductions in the work hours of surgery
residents, mandated under new rules that start next summer. ''You can't just
fix one thing,'' Warshaw said. ''You have to get all the wheels turning in
the right direction.''
WHEN THE National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine released its
scathing report on hospital errors in 1999, mistakes in prescribing or
administering prescription drugs ranked high among the problem areas. Just
how prevalent these mistakes are has been made clear by a new finding: In a
typical 300-bed hospital, 40 potentially harmful drug errors are made every
day. That is the conclusion of a study of 36 hospitals and skilled nursing
facilities in Colorado and Georgia. The researchers found mistakes of one
kind or another in 19 percent of all doses administered. While the vast
majority simply involved administrative snafus like failing to administer the
drug at the proper time, the researchers said 7 percent of the errors were
potentially harmful to patients. The study, reported in the Archives of
Internal Medicine, strengthens the case for better hospital staffing and for
new patient safety goals set by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of
Healthcare Organizations. ... Dr. Lucian L. Leape of the Harvard School of
Public Health, an author of the 1999 Institute of Medicine report, said that
since then some hospitals have improved their drug dispensing systems. ... As
sensible as the Joint Commission's goals are, they are unlikely to succeed if
hospitals and nursing homes are not maintaining adequate staffing levels,
especially of nurses. ...
ving+.shtml>
Paula M. Rayman, Boston Globe, September 13, 2002
She was lying in a hospital bed with a cover pulled up to her chin when I
walked in to pay a chaplain's visitation. ... A nurse on the unit witnessed
her distress and took an extra moment during all the busy-ness of medications
and changing beds. She saw the scared-to-death-patient, slowed down, and paid
attention. The nurse had also come to this country - from Japan - and knew
the burdens of trying to make a living in this land of plenty. ... Business
as usual for this nurse was beyond bottom-line thinking - it was the business
of care. In our society the work of caregivers is often undervalued. Most of
the labor of care has been done by women - who hold about 90 percent of paid
caregiving jobs and also do the bulk of unpaid caregiving. This devaluing of
caregiving work because it is seen as women's work is distressing. ...
Despite the culture of greed evidenced so starkly in recent news, we know our
society has another face. These are images of people going beyond selfishness
to connect with others - sometimes in the dramatic scenes of Sept. 11 and
more regularly in hospital rooms, clinics, and shelters. We all depend on
this network of caring to make it through our lives. ...
For as long as she could remember, LaTanya Robinson, 23, of Dorchester,
wanted to be a nurse. ''There is something about taking care of people when
they are sick that has always interested me,'' said Robinson. ''It makes me
feel as if I am helping or doing something good.'' But after graduating from
the University of Massachusetts at Boston last December with a bachelor's
degree in nursing, she began worrying about the long hours, the heavy patient
loads, and the stress -- byproducts of a critical nursing shortage that shows
no signs of easing. ...
resources+.shtml>
Liz Kowalczyk, Boston Globe, September 22, 2002
Massachusetts hospitals are struggling with an unexpected surge in patients
that is forcing them to open beds mothballed years ago, move employees to
far-flung offices to create space for clinical programs, make patients wait
months for routine appointments, and schedule cardiac procedures late into
the night. ''We have not seen anything like this in quite some time,'' said
Carmela Coyle, senior vice president for policy at the American Hospital
Association. ''It's dramatic and it's beginning to create some problems in
communities across America.'' ... (Editor's Comment: Well, duh ...)
e+.shtml>
Judith Norris-Cox, Weymouth, Boston Globe, September 22, 2002
I read the article about the nursing shortage with great interest (''A
struggle to fill the gaps,'' Diane E. Lewis, BostonWorks, Sept. 15). ... I
work for a very busy internal medicine practice and am the only nurse for
five medical providers. ... I read nursing magazines regularly, and the
recruiting advertisements show smiling nurses and promises of wonderful
nursing assignments. The reality is so far removed from these glossy
depictions that the nursing field should be sued for false advertising.
e+.shtml>
Ellen D. Harris, RN, North Andover, Boston Globe, September 22, 2002
What good do all the incentives to educate and hire new nurses do if we can't
retain them because of the tremendous workload and stress? ... We all saw
ourselves sitting on the side of a bed comforting someone in his time of
need, time of pain and dying. Instead, we pass tremendous amounts of pills
and documents to cover our butts and fill out forms and prepare assessments
and careplans that fulfill regulatory compliance but which no one has the
time to carry out. We are all suspect in abuse and fraud. We take daily
verbal and physical assaults from patients and their families. Our work days
include mandatory overtime. ... For years we were the last to get retirement
plans and increased benefits, especially outside of hospital environments.
... We want to know we can get time off to be part of that life, and we want
to provide the best clinical care we know how to the patients in our care and
feel good about it at the end of the day.
Commenting on the failure of Massachusetts hospitals to provide enough beds
for its aging population (''Surge of patients taxes hospital resources,''
Page A1, Sept. 22), Dr. Andy Whittemore, chief medical officer at Brigham and
Women's Hospital, blames consultants for the problem: ''Consultants came in
the early '90s advising us to downsize, which we all dutifully did.''
Consultants didn't magically appear unbidden on hospital doorsteps, nor were
hospital executives and CEOs ''dutifully'' obeying their orders. Hospitals
paid millions to invite consultants into their institutions because they
wanted to cut costs. When nurses, doctors, and patients complained that
hospitals were cutting care, executives conveniently sidestepped
accountability by arguing that ''the consultants made us do it.''Now they're
at it again - using the consultant excuse to avoid responsibility for past
mistakes. What's even worse, faced with financial pressures, they are still
wasting millions on consultants who have no experience delivering care. When
hospital administrators and physician leaders start focusing on care rather
than profit and market share, then maybe Massachusetts will have enough beds
- and enough nurses and doctors to care for the patients in them.
Hyannis - Cape Cod Hospital will have the state's highest-paid nurses south
of Boston if local Massachusetts Nurses Association members approve an
agreement reached Wednesday giving them raises of as much as 34 percent over
the next 2 1/2 years. During discussions at the hospital overseen by a
federal mediator the nurses conceded their demand for a two-year contract,
but in return will receive a higher pay raise than they had sought, according
to nurses bargaining unit chairwoman Marilyn Rouette. ... Nurses originally
wanted an overall 28 percent increase. Wednesday's agreement goes one step
further. It grants raises from 28 percent to 34 percent, depending on
experience, years of employment and educational degree. ...
re_for_less+.shtml>
Alexandra Dougherty, RN, Dedham, Boston Globe, October 6, 2002
As a registered nurse currently practicing in the state of Massachusetts, I
read with interest your Sept. 15 Boston Works feature regarding why new
nurses are leaving the profession (''A struggle to fill the gaps''). I have
been in the profession for 17 years. In that time I have worked in various
critical care and emergency departments in Canada, the United States, and the
Middle East. ... With unified standards for entry to practice, codes of
conduct, and public accountability, nursing is no longer a profession by
default. Yet with the fiscal constraints associated with decreased public
funding and progressive privatization of health care, nurses are expected to
do more for less. In attempts to save money, many organizations reduce levels
of ancillary staff with nurses expected to carry out a number of ancillary or
clerical tasks in addition to the provision of patient care. When staffing
levels are reduced, patient care suffers. ... Nurses who are given an
opportunity to do what they were trained to do tend to remain in the
profession. Given the current climate in health care, it should come as no
surprise that novice and expert nurses alike are leaving the profession. ...
(T)he public needs to hold these organizations accountable for providing
staffing levels that will ensure safe and effective delivery of care.
The 48,000-strong New South Wales Nurses Association (NSWNA) has a new
leadership team following the retirement on Friday (30 August) of Sandra
Moait as the Association's General Secretary. ... As of 31 August 2002, the
new General Secretary is Brett Holmes and the new Assistant Secretary is
Judith Kiejda. ...
Nurses in the upper North Island are being balloted for industrial action as
employment contract negotiations reach a stalemate. At issue is whether there
should be separate employment agreements that would split senior nurse
managers from all other public sector nurses. The nurses are trying to
negotiate a multi-employer collective agreement for better pay and
conditions. But if the 5000 nurses involved vote to take industrial action,
services at nine hospitals could be disrupted. Nurses working in the
community, such as public health and district health nurses, would also join
their colleagues in strike action. ...
Army nurses are being enlisted to work at Palmerston North Hospital as a
nursing shortage there reaches critical levels. Lyn Olsthoorn of the New
Zealand Nurses Organisation in Palmerston North said that a few weeks ago no
nurses were available for one shift in Ward 25, a medical ward. She said Army
nurses were brought in from Linton, near Palmerston North, to cover. ...
Halifax - More than 220 nurses have been without a contract for the past year
and a half. Contract talks for the Victorian Order of Nurses in Nova Scotia
have resumed. More than 220 nurses have been without a contract for the past
year and a half. Among other things, the nurses want better mileage rates
when they use their own vehicles. They also want to be compensated for the
higher insurance premiums they pay because they use their vehicles for
business. ...
Halifax - Nurses who work for the Victorian Order of Nurses have decided
against a strike vote, right now. They say conciliation talks have gone well
this week, and all non-monetary issues have been resolved. Bette Yetman is
with the Nova Scotia Nurses Union. "The significance of not calling a strike
vote is a gesture of good faith to the conciliator and the employer. We hope
that on October 15, we will be able to resolve the matter," Yetman says.
October 15 is the day the two sides will meet again to talk about money
matters. Yetman warns the V-O-N will lose nurses to hospitals in the
province, if the two groups do not have wage parity.
The PNG Nurse's Association has urged the government to respect the existing
industrial award reached between the Department of Personnel Management and
the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. General Secretary Murray
Paiva said the Government should not violate the nurse's 2000 award. "Trade
unions will not accept under the mini-budget any limitation to our right to
bargain in good faith and to bargain collectively," he said. "What we need is
a code of good faith for bargaining in times of serious economic crisis
between industrial relations machinery and the unions so that existing labor
legislations, conventions and standards were not violated. ...
Charlottetown, PEI - Island nurses have ratified the latest contract offer
with the province, with 82 per cent voting in favor of the deal. Union
president Margaret Duffy Murphy says the new contract will give nurses an 18
percent wage hike over the next three years. In addition, they'll receive six
per cent retroactivity back to April 1, 2002. ...
Overnight emergency room nurses at Santa Cabrini Hospital have sent a message
that they are fed up. Four of them decided to protest against hospital
management by refusing to work their shift. When they got to work, at around
11:30 p.m., they saw that there weren't enough nurses to take care of the 60
patients who were waiting for treatment. The nurses say their working
conditions are putting patients' lives in danger. They maintain that they
informed management of the lack of personnel and that nothing was done about
it. Hospital management sent the striking nurses home and informed them they
could face disciplinary action.
Regarding the July 22 letter of Jeanne Verity, RN, I would like to say "two
thumbs up!" Unfortunately, it is impossible to address all reasons nurses are
leaving this once truly rewarding profession. ... I am an LPN with 30 years
of practice and experience in hospitals and nursing homes, and there are
times when you have to wear many hats. I truly thank you, Jeanne, for
addressing the many troubling aspects that have seeped into our proud and
caring profession. I am hopeful that changes will come about, because I
cannot imagine this life without nurses.
Burlington, Vt. By a nearly two-to-one margin, nurses at Vermont's largest
hospital have voted to unionize. Ballots counted Thursday night showed
Fletcher Allen Health Care nurses had voted 672-to-345 to affiliate with the
Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals. ... Union supporters
among the nurses had argued that they needed more clout in making workplace
decisions and wanted to press the hospital management to address staff
shortages. ...
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