Daily Archives: April 3, 2015

04.03.15
by

Conversations with Kay, Part 2

 

Recently, we started a regular item featuring the life and nursing career stories of Kay McVay, a longtime intensive care unit RN at Kaiser Permanente and president emeritus of the California Nurses Association. In our last installment, she was explaining how the association, before leadership was taken over by staff nurses in 1993, looked down upon and ignored the concerns of RNs who worked at the bedside. She had just called CNA about a work problem and been given the brush off.

So what did you do then?

It wasn’t just me. Some Kaiser nurses were already working on this problem. I got this call and they asked me if I was happy with the new contract, and I said no. They said, “Well, we’re going to meet on Thursday down at the Lung Association in Oakland. Can you be there?” Sure, I said. So I started going, and in 1983, that turned into our group, RNs for Quality Care. And Martha Kuhl, who worked at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, had a group called SNAP, the Staff Nurse Action Project. We’d all been trying to figure out how we could change CNA to be more involved with the nurses. I think about 95 percent of CNA’s funds came from staff nurses, but they spent maybe 10 percent on us. We were the “Four K’s”: There was Kit Costello, Martha Kuhl, Marilynne Kenefick, and myself, Kay McVay.

We started going to their board meetings, and they were blown away that we would be at their meetings, because they’d never had anybody come before. There’s wasn’t a staff nurse on that board, believe me. So they decided, “Well, we’ll take care of that,” and they started holding their meetings down in Southern California. Well, it was very interesting. There were several of us who managed to get on a plane and go down to San Diego or to L.A. or wherever it was, and we’d be there. It was out of our own pocket.

Wow, that’s determination. How did they respond to that?

When we still showed up, they started having these special meetings that they would have before the board meeting so that all the decisions and discussions had already taken place before they’d come into the board meeting.

So trying to participate in their meetings didn’t seem to work.

We were trying our very best to work within the system, and we did what we could do. So then we thought, we need to get at least one staff nurse on their board. Maybe if we got one, they’d listen to whoever it was, and we could get a little more done.

Did you manage to elect someone?

It took a couple of tries, but we finally got one person, Marilynne Kenefick, on the board. And they would not call on her to let her speak and her vote just did not count.

So what did you all do next?

Well, in the 1990s, CNA did this brilliant thing. They hired this woman down in Southern California by the name of RoseAnn DeMoro and brought her up to be the staff person in charge of the Economic and General Welfare division. The first time I met her, Children’s was out on strike and I went to the picket line to give them support, and we ended up having a conversation, and I came home, and I told my husband Richard, “My God, you know, this is the first time I’ve ever talked to anybody that actually understands what unions are about.”

And what are unions about?

Well, to understand what the problems are, what needs to be done to recognize the working person, to support the working person to be able to express themselves and to protect themselves. To understand the relationship between employers and employees, to help people understand what it means to be working class, that it’s okay, and that working class people together have the power and right to improve their lives.

Check back next issue to learn how the bedside nurses fought back and won leadership of their union.

04.03.15
by

Call the Midwife is Back with Season 4

Share

call the midwife

Call the Midwife is back with season four!

Last Sunday, March 29th, everyone’s favorite BBC drama returned as its characters were catapulted into the 1960s. That’s right, Call the Midwife is back with season four!

The series follows the work and lives of a group of midwives and nuns at Nonnatus House, a nursing convent which serves a very low-income population in 1950s and 1960s East End London. While the main focus is, as the title indicates, delivering babies and ensuring safe childbirths, the sisters and midwives perform a host of additional nursing duties throughout the deprived community. Like most nurses, the characters of Call the Midwife often go far beyond the call of duty for their patients.

Besides providing excellent entertainment and period drama panache in the same vein of Downton Abbey, Call the Midwife also touches on a lot of important social issues. And, with its focus on the challenges and fruits of a career in nursing, the show has gained a substantial following amongst nurses and other healthcare professionals.

Here something really cool I just read about on the Call the Midwife Facebook page: On Nashville’s Public Television website, faculty from the Vanderbilt School of Nursing have been posting guest blogs recapping each episode ever since Call the Midwife’s first season. There are spoilers, so you’ll want to watch before reading, but these guest blogs are a really cool companion to the show — especially for nurses and midwives — because they discuss the show’s happenings in the context of clinical concerns and associated issues. You can check these awesome recaps out here.

If you are a fan who is stoked that Call the Midwife is back with season four, you can check your local listings or catch up on season three and the new episodes of season four as they are posted here at PBS.org.

If you’re a nurse and you’ve never watched Call the Midwife, you can get hooked on the first season at Netflix. The whole series is also available for purchase or rental on Amazon.

Whether it’s reality, comedy, or drama, what’s your favorite television show about or featuring nurses?

04.03.15
by

Consumers Contributing Less To Health Savings Accounts, Study Finds

Even though consumers are digging deeper to cover rising out-of-pocket medical costs, they’re contributing less to health savings accounts that could help take the sting out of their expenses, according to a new study.

Between 2011 and 2014, the percentage of people who said they contributed nothing to their health savings accounts (HSAs) more than doubled, to 23 percent, according to a survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Meanwhile, the percentage who said they contributed $1,500 or more dropped to 30 percent from 44 percent.

While the reasons for the decline in contributions are unclear, “one of the things to consider is that these plans have been around for a while now and at some point people may stop contributing if they’ve built up an account balance,” says Paul Fronstin, director of EBRI’s health research and education program. For example, someone with a $5,000 HSA balance whose plan has a $2,000 deductible may feel comfortable he can cover out-of-pocket costs.

Unlike flexible spending account balances, in which money is generally lost if unused at year end, HSA balances accumulate and can be used in future years even if workers change jobs.

Health savings accounts were established in 2003 as a way for people to save for future out-of-pocket medical expenses. The money is deposited, accumulates and can be withdrawn tax free. The accounts must be linked to a health plan with a deductible of at least $1,300 for individual coverage and $2,600 for family coverage in 2015.

Employers often contribute to workers’ health savings accounts, but the EBRI analysis found that their contributions declined as well. Sixty-seven percent of workers said they received employer contributions in 2014, down from 71 percent in 2013. EBRI’s analysis included both HSAs and health reimbursement arrangements, another type of account to which only employers contribute money for their workers’ health care expenses. In addition, the funds belong to the employer.

As employers continue to shift more health care expenses onto workers’ shoulders, offering high-deductible plans that link to financial accounts has become increasingly popular.

In 2014, 73 percent of companies with more than 1,000 workers offered an account-based health plan, up from 51 percent in 2009, according to the Towers Watson/National Business Group on Health annual employer health care survey. A third of workers at those companies were enrolled in such accounts in 2014, the survey found, more than double the median 14 percent that were enrolled five years earlier.

Please contact Kaiser Health News to send comments or ideas for future topics for the Insuring Your Health column.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.