Posted on 04/15/2011 6:40:08 AM PDT by massmike
Nurses at Tufts Medical Center last night voted to authorize a strike in a dispute over nurse-to-patient staffing levels, setting the stage for a potential prolonged dispute after the hospital chief vowed to bring in replacement nurses.
Massachusetts Nurses Association spokesman David Schildmeier said 70 percent of the voting nurses cast ballots in favor of authorizing a strike.
Schildmeier declined to say how many of the medical center’s 1,100 nurses participated in the vote, but “it was a very, very strong turnout,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
That is awesome.
There are zillions of jobs for nurses all over this country. If they don’t like working at Tufts go someplace else. Damn unions.
There are some professions that absolutely should not be allowed to strike. Nursing is one of those for the potential to cause harm to patients. I asked a nurse friend of mine and she says she would never go on strike for that very reason.
Hopefully this means the death of yet another irksome union.
I am a nurse, and would go on strike if the issue is nurse-patient ratios.
This has nothing to do with my feelings about unions ( which I dislike), but about patient safety.
Taking care of more than 4 patients is dangerous care.
I am a nurse, and would go on strike if the issue is nurse-patient ratios.
So, with this logic it would be better to allow more patients to suffer neglect for lack of nurses than to find more responsible ways to resolve the situation.
Get out of here. You don’t really dislike unions, do you?
The argument over ratios is dishonest. It is merely a union tactic to increase dues paying membership. No hospital should be forced to adhere to defined ratios. You have to take into account patient acuity and the experience of the nurse. But you knew that already.
You have to force the hospital to adhere to a ratio, otherwise they would not comply. Nursing experience has nothing to do with it. An experienced nurse does not have 10 legs and 10 eyes to keep track of their patients. That is what you need when you are understaffed.
I have worked understaffed, and let me tell you I was lucky nothing bad happened to my patients.
You have no idea how stressful working understaffed day in, day out is.
Patient acuity is much higher now. Patients that used to be in the ICU 15 years ago are now on the floors.
Adherence to a strict policy is the only way to force hospitals to do right by the patients.
As a patient, I would want these ratios in place, so that I can get the attention I need during my hospital stay.
Get out of here?
What is that supposed to mean?
I have a right to my opinion.
While I think unions do get abusive at times and I don’t like their political activism, I think there are situations where they have been able to make workplaces and consumers safer. I think the FR attitude that all unions and/or union actions are bad no matter what is painting with too broad a brush.
And when the hospital can't find the necessary number of nurses, it closes. And then we're all better off, aren't we? Take a look at California. They have strict ratios that actually require a nurse that is on break be replaced with a nurse. For 15 minutes!
But, for those hospitals who won't close, they will exercise the only other option. Get rid of all other unit-based staff and put the RN's back on bed pan duty. Have fun, suckers.
If a hospital cannot find the neccesary amount of nurses, it should close. It would be an unsafe hospital.
I do not know about California rules. I just know when I haven’t seen a patient in a couple of hours due to understaffing, the patient loses.
Yeah, that's the way to conduct civil discourse.
In order to comply with mandated ratios, the hospital must resort to investing more money in employing nurses (to you this is a good thing, I'm sure). But that money must be taken from someplace else, and that someplace is the pocket of unlicensed assistive personnel.
At that point, the hospital then must expand the scope of responsibilities of the nurses to tasks that used to be done by LPN's, techs, clerks, transporters, etc. So, you still have the necessary body count of nurses, but the level of effective, safe care goes down.
This is how the real world works. It isn't explained this way in the union meetings or from the podium at the local rally. Trust me: the union doesn't care about the plight of the nurse. It cares about cash. The union is legally permitted to lie to your face. The employer is not. You can look it up.
-Fire the striking nurses.
-Close the hopital for being understaffed.
-Send the patients to another hospital.
As severance, give the fired nurses a one year subscription to the local newspaper...so they can use the classifieds to look for another job.
F’em...
A study that was done by Tufts showed their nurses spent less time with patients than any other Boston Hospital.
I hope it’s not another strong arm tactic by Soros thugs. Their SEIU has already imposed itself on another hospital chain in MA.
Where I work, you do an acuity assesment at the start of the shift, which is sent to the staffing office.
However, it gets ignored because “Nurse A called in sick”, or “Nurse B is on vacation” or” Gee, the flu has hit the community hard, please everyone, we all need to work harder.” The only way hospitals will comply is by force.
JCAH never, I repeat never, asks the nurses what their patient ratio is. They are only interested in the reams of paperwork they mandate us to do. The state is not interested in this issue.
The only entity that fights for this- mostly ineffective- is the unions.
You infer that the LPN is an ancillary person the the RN. That the LPN is a “helper” to the RN. Not true. LPNs have the same horrendous workload as an RN. The RN , who has her own workload, has the give medication ( that the LPN is not allowed to give) and supervise the LPN patients.
We get transporters when we are lucky. The hospital can fire the clerks, we just won’t answer the phones. We are too busy in the patient rooms. Tough for the physicians families who want to talk to the nurses.
Instead of hospital buildings that look like a hotel,and cost millions, hospitals should do right thing by the patients and their employees.
So very true.
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