FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 8, 2015

Alaska nurses endorse national union affiliation with AFT
AaNA Labor Program announces new partnership in Alaska

The Alaska Nurses Association (AaNA) Labor Program formally announced today that it has agreed to affiliate with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Nurses and Health Professionals.

The announcement was made jointly by AaNA Labor Council Chair Donna Phillips in Anchorage and AFT President Randi Weingarten in Washington, D.C. The two organizations had been in discussions for several months, culminating in a meeting of the two leaders in Anchorage in late March.

In voting over the last two weeks, registered nurses in bargaining units represented by the labor program overwhelmingly affirmed the earlier decision of the AaNA Labor Council board to seek affiliation with the AFT. The affiliation was also approved by the AFT executive council in a special meeting Tuesday.

“We are excited and honored that Alaska’s nurses have put their confidence in the AFT, as a voice and fighter for nurses and for quality health care,” Weingarten said. “Alaska’s nurses will be joining our union of professionals, 1.6 million members strong, including 113,000 members working in the health care industry across the nation, as we continue to fight for quality care, safe staffing levels and high professional standards — and demand that hospitals and health care facilities put patients before profits. We look forward to working with our new Alaska members to ensure they have the tools and conditions they need to care and advocate for the people they serve.”

Phillips said the announcement concludes the process that began 18 months ago when the Alaska nurses launched an initiative to investigate possible affiliation with a national union and to identify and review possible partners.

“We sought a national union with a record of representing registered nurses, one that is active in the AFL-CIO and a partner that will give AaNA members a voice in the national policies that affect their work every day,” Phillips said. “We are professionals — and the AFT is the preeminent union of professionals in American labor today.”

The AFT Nurses and Health Professionals division members include 85,000 registered nurses in 19 states. The Alaska affiliation will add more than 1,300 nurses in three bargaining units to that membership.

“An affiliation with the national union will provide AaNA with training and mentoring opportunities for new and existing leaders, professional development for our members, assistance with new organizing efforts and support for AaNA’s existing bargaining units,” Phillips said. The partnership with the AFT ultimately will give Alaska nurses a role in the national union’s policies and programs for registered nurses and other health care professionals.

As they join the AFT family, Weingarten said, “Alaska’s nurses will find a welcoming home, joining their colleagues who devote their lives to making a difference every day for the patients, students and many others they serve. Our members deserve — as frankly do all American workers — respect and dignity for the work they do.”

Changes in the health care industry, particularly recent trends toward mergers and acquisitions that have produced several large multistate and nationwide care-provider systems, led the AaNA General Assembly to adopt a resolution in 2013 to investigate affiliating with a national union.

Two large provider systems operating in Alaska employ many AaNA members. The two systems are Providence Health & Services Alaska, which is part of the third-largest not-for-profit health system in the United States, as well as PeaceHealth Medical System, which operates the Ketchikan Medical Center, as well as other facilities in Alaska, Oregon and Washington. AaNA’s third bargaining unit represents nurses at Central Peninsula General Hospital in Soldotna.

Phillips said the new partnership with the AFT will help strengthen the voices of nurses currently in contract talks with Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage.

Weingarten noted that as a result of the previous affiliation of the National Federation of Nurses, AFT affiliates in Oregon and Washington state already represent nurses at other hospitals in both the Providence and the PeaceHealth systems. In Alaska, the AFT already represents thousands of state and local public workers; faculty and classified staff in the university, community and technical college system; and teachers and paraprofessionals in public schools, all of whom are affiliated with the AFT’s state federation, the Alaska Public Employees Association/AFT — one of the oldest and largest public employee unions in the state.

“We are pleased that Alaska’s nurses have made the decision to affiliate with the AFT,” said APEA/AFT President Cecily Hodges. “Nurses share the commitment to quality services and professional standards that are central to the mission of public employees, educators and the many others who make APEA/AFT an important voice in Alaska.”

AaNA’s Phillips emphasized the shared values and experience that led to the choice of the AFT. “The AaNA Labor Council sought to learn what a national union organization could provide to the Alaska Nurses Association Labor Program,” Phillips said. “Ultimately, the labor council team concluded that the AFT was the best fit for AaNA’s Labor Program membership, our history and our vision for the future.”

About the Alaska Nurses Association
The mission of the Alaska Nurses Association is to advance and support the profession of nursing in Alaska. AaNA is a voice for and represents 11,955 nurses across the state of Alaska by working to improve health standards statewide; promoting access to health care services for Alaskans; fostering high standards for and the professional development of nurses; advancing the economic and general welfare of nurses; and empowering nurses to be dynamic and powerful leaders in health care and political communities. More information is available at www.aknurse.org.

About the American Federation of Teachers
The American Federation of Teachers is a union of professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, health care and public services. The AFT represents 1.6 million members, including nurses and health care professionals, pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; and early childhood educators. More information is available at www.aft.org.

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Computers are everywhere in medicine. If you have an operation, your surgeon might study the best practices online before the procedure. If you are diagnosed with a difficult-to-treat cancer, chances are your doctor will use an online database to find an appropriate clinical trial.  And, if you develop a rash, you’ll probably use the Internet to find out what it might be.

Donald Lindberg, the outgoing director of the National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine, had a hand in making these resources widely available. Since he joined the NLM in 1984, he saw the promise in putting research online so that doctors could have the latest medical advancements at their fingertips. And he wanted that same option for patients as they’ve become increasingly engaged in navigating their own care.

“When I first arrived at NLM, I didn’t come prepared to change anything, but technology was changing all around all of us,” Lindberg said. “We’ve had to make major changes or else we would have become obsolete.” The National Library of Medicine, which is the world’s largest medical library, was founded in the 1800s and initially sent out a monthly guide to medical research. As technology has evolved, so have the methods the library uses to disseminate information to patients and providers.

He still remembers his early days at NIH, when information-sharing technology involved phone companies and point-to-point transmissions. But the advent of computers and the World Wide Web changed all of that.

Lindberg, who pioneered the first use of computers in medicine in the 1960s, was involved during his 30-year tenure with almost every government-funded sorting initiative of new and old medical information — the 1998 creation of Medline Plus for consumers to find out general medical information; the 1997 creation of Clinicaltrials.gov, the largest global registry for these types of studies; and the management and installment of Visible Humans, an online library of digital images based on the anatomy of a man and woman.

Lindberg, who retired April 1, recently spoke with KHN’s Lisa Gillespie about his NLM experience and what he thinks is next on the horizon. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.

Q:  What are some of the biggest changes that took place during your time at NLM and shaped the experience of being a doctor or patient?

A:  The introduction of computer interpretation of EKGs in the study of the heart was one piece of pavement in the road of success for computers. That was greeted pretty much with support from patients and doctors, though doctors were [also] concerned in making sure the stuff was right. I would say most are not experts [in interpreting this technology], especially in the case of general practitioners. It was a big deal for a computer to do that, and it was rapidly accepted.

Q:  You were involved in the creation and roll out of many systems to help doctors and patients. Which ones have made the greatest impact?

A:  Medline Plus, a database that tells you things like what chemicals and drugs get into mother’s milk, has had a lot of influence. If you’re lactating, it is of great interest. The major change in our whole field was Human Genome Project. That project has produced millions and even billions of facts that would only achieve meaning if they were put together to answer questions, [which was done through Medline Plus].

A very current one is clinicaltrials.gov.  [The concept] started at the National Institutes of Health, and even there, if you asked “how many clinical trials are going on?” there was no answer. There wasn’t even a list. We were surprised to discover that. … Everyone agreed there should be records [of trials]. In Israel, for instance, they saw what we were doing and said it was going to take too much money to do it [themselves], so they started putting their records in our system. Clinicaltrials.gov now has 150,000 trials [listed in the global database].

Q:  As NLM created and implemented computer applications, did health care providers shape what information was shared and how technology was used?

A: At one point, I was trying to do things the nurses would like. The chief of nursing came to me and said the computer was a wonderful thing. I asked her what she liked about it, and she said, “well, it’ll give me an alphabetized list of names on the ward.” That’s not a great accomplishment, but it’s what they wanted. We tried to keep our eyes out for things like that.

Q:  What are the biggest technological innovations you’ve seen?

A:  The idea of telemedicine is a very powerful one, and it’s been with us for a long time. Once we get improved gear [for its use], there will be a new application that I couldn’t have thought of. Take tele-dermatology. There aren’t enough experts. …  So the basic idea is that once you have digital cameras, you send [case information] to an expert who will look at it and give an opinion. A dermatologist told me once about a patient who had obvious dermatitis problems and had spent five years going to doctors who couldn’t treat it. The guy was unemployable because his condition was so severe that he couldn’t move around. And it got cured [using telemedicine].

Q:  What are your predictions for the future? Especially at the NLM?

A:  The idea of the informed patient will dominate changes. You can’t underestimate patients. [Now] versus when I got started … they’re willing to participate in medical-decision making. Back then, patients didn’t want an active role in their own management. Smart doctors now encourage it. That will make a big difference. Now they [are starting to] understand prevention … and they’ll understand end-of-life care. How aggressive the treatment is should be based on the patient’s wishes, but they have to understand [the choices].

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