E-mail us at editor@nurseweek.com. Please use the name of the article you are responding to as the subject of your e-mail. Unless otherwise noted, all letters may be edited and published.

Please include your full name, hometown and state, and healthcare credentials. Brief and articulate messages are more likely to be published.

August 28, 2000

Snap out of it

I wish my colleagues would wake up and smell the coffee ("Readers Respond," Aug. 14). The majority of us unionized nurses statistically have a greater say in our work-life conditions, meaning a better working environment, pay and benefits package. We have a greater impact on the delivery of quality bedside care. That is, if you believe that a nurse can deliver eight hours’ worth of nursing care only on an eight-hour shift.

Yes, unions do keep management in check when it comes to what a staff nurse can and cannot safely perform during her shift. Unions not only care for working nurses, we also care for patients; we fight for what the patient deserves. Some hospitals – HMO or otherwise – worry about only one thing: the bottom line. Of course, they claim that they are concerned about patients, too.

Yeah, they are concerned all right, but their concern is whether the patient will sue them.

I also want my colleagues to realize that management will try everything in its power and means to discredit the union and the nurses who are trying to organize. The "negativity" does not come from one side of the aisle. Unions do not foster negativism; we fight for nurses’ rights as well as the patients’. In bringing out the positive, you inadvertently bring out the negative to prove your point in an argument. When dealing with issues that are dear to us, such as decent pay and treatment of the professional nurse by management as well as patient welfare, it is human nature to defend what we feel and think is decent and right.

Unionization may not be the magic pill, but at this point it is the only means for working RNs to finally realize that we have the power to balance that of the employer.

Noel Domingo, RN
Riverside, Calif.

Happy returns

I just read "Return Engagement." At Loma Linda University Medical Center, we offer a 12-week program called the Clinical Edge. The program was started several years ago for new graduates to ease their transition into the workforce, particularly in clinical care areas.

As the nursing shortage developed, we revamped the program to look at the returning RN. The program offers several clinical tracts from which participants can choose based on their area of interest. They complete about nine days of didactic work; the rest of the time is devoted to being precepted in a variety of clinical settings, as determined by their area of interest.

We have had RNs complete the program who have been out of nursing for 16 to 20 years, and all have done well and are employed at Loma Linda. They are not promised a position upon completion of the program, but we ended up hiring all of them.

Helen Staples-Evans, MS, RN
Administrative director, staff development
Loma Linda University Medical Center
Loma Linda, Calif.

Critical path

I enjoyed your cover story ("Roads Less Traveled"), but I was a bit discomforted by the emphasis that education was not given. In fact, BSN nurses play a huge role in clinical education, which is governed by the BRN regulations.

In any case, I am glad she mentioned education as a career path, but realistically it is a critical path that I would like to see emphasized in a future issue.

After all, without the educator, there are no nurses to travel uncommon career paths.

Tom McKay, Ph.D., RN
Director of nursing and health education,
Hartnell College
Salinas, Calif.

A place for everything

All the articles that have been written about nurses and unions are great. We need to unionize, as this is becoming a standard in the business world. With all this talk about unions and how we can make a difference, we have forgotten the one reason that we started this – the patients, or consumers, as our employers call them. We left behind the needs and the wants of these individuals while we were fighting for the right to have a union to take care of us and preventing our employers from taking advantage of us. The patients’ needs should always come first.

I have recently been a patient in the hospital where I work, and I know that there are too few nurses to do the job that we are required to do. Who suffers but the patients? We herd them in and out of the hospital so fast that we don’t find out what is wrong with them until they are at home or have passed on. We also forget to listen to our patients. Nurses are better at this than doctors, but if the MD doesn’t listen to the nurse and the patient, what can we do? We can stand up to the doctors and remind them that the patient and the nurse know what they are talking about.

This has always been a sore spot in my nursing career, doctors who think that they are so much better than nurses. But we saved them more times than they want to admit. We are all human beings, so why can’t we work together to take care of patients?

We still need a union to keep the hospital administration in its place.

Sheryl Crowson, RN
Waterford, Calif.

Whine and cheese

I am writing in response to Carla Cope’s letter about "Crossing the Line." As one of the nurses walking the line June 28 and July 19 at Dameron Hospital, I take exception to the insinuation that we abandoned our patients. The hospital was given notice of our actions well in advance and could have chosen alternatives other than locking us out. The administration then spent hundreds of thousands of dollars that left the community which Dameron serves.

Concerning professionalism: Why did returning CNA nurses hear over and over about the roughness and rudeness of U.S. Nursing’s replacements? Staffing levels during these lockouts were almost twice the norm at Dameron. Is this the lack of excess Cope refers to in her letter? Is the Dameron administration aware that CNA nurses have been approached by aides and LVNs, asking when we will strike again because they need a rest and staffing was so great during our work action?

As to "complaining and whining," maybe this refers to our questions and concerns that go without a response from Dameron management and administration. We have been ignored as we express concern about the level of care we can reasonably deliver to our patients. Team leaders are routinely responsible for 12 to 15 patients, and nurses are working four to five 12-hour shifts per week or staying 16 hours because there is no one to replace them.

If one is a temporary replacement and has neither a stake in the community nor long-term responsibility to patients and their families, one does not whine or complain about one’s working conditions.

If advocating for patients and colleagues while losing more than will ever be regained with any raise is whining, then please pass the cheese, because the whine will continue to flow.

Linda C. Bousquet, RN
Chief nurse negotiator
Stockton, Calif.

A healthy future

Thank you to Carol Bradley ("Editor’s Note") for recognizing the contributions of the community college in producing quality nurses who are prepared to work efficiently and professionally at the bedside. The nursing faculty in these programs are truly the workhorses who have persisted under the most adverse situations, from the lottery system of student selection to receiving pay lower than what entry level nurses who graduate from ADN programs command.

If we as professionals are concerned about the future of nursing in this state, I would urge your readership to write their legislators to demand that they pass bills that provide: 1) incentives for nurses who wish to work in community and state colleges as educators; 2) differentiated funding for nursing programs, which in all settings are high-cost programs vulnerable to cuts; 3) incentives for the health care industry to accept greater fiscal responsibility for providing clinical education; 4) and other alternatives to an admissions lottery to ensure affirmative action.

The future health of California residents is in the hands of registered nurses. To ensure that future, we must produce smart, competent, ethical practitioners with a lifelong love of learning. To do this, we as nurses must work together to assure seamless articulation between programs and mentoring for our new graduates from school to work. I applaud Bradley for making the case for a "healthy shot of support."

Sharlene Limon, MS, RN
Dean of health sciences, Ohlone College
Fremont, Calif.

Rodeo beef

I was appalled by the article about rodeo nursing ("Bitin’ the Bullet No More"). The photo tells the whole story of the cruelty of rodeo. Note the tight bucking strap on the animal. Are we supposed to feel compassion for the riders who have contusions, dislocations, torn ligaments, punctured lungs, ruptured organs and concussions?

The same things happen to the animals. Oh, and sometimes they die, as did a horse at a rodeo in Santa Barbara last summer.

The article also states that "there is no other sport where your competitor outweighs you tenfold." I would not consider rodeo a sport because all the participants are not there voluntarily and have not given informed consent regarding the risks and benefits that we as nurses are so concerned with. The animals are the victims.

Debby Mooney, RN
Ventura, Calif.

Letters From Last Week