200 Kaiser RNs Rally to Protest Downgrading of Care for New Oakland Hospital

More than 200 Kaiser Permanente RNs rallied outside the Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center Thursday afternoon to sound a public alarm about patient care reductions the HMO giant is proposing for its new Oakland facility which is expected to open this summer.
 
Waving signs reading, “Kaiser executives: Our patients should thrive not be deprived,” the RNs said their daily experience shows a stark contrast with the HMO giant’s multi-million dollar “thrive” ad campaign. They described substantial problems with short staffing and cuts that come at a time when Kaiser is making record profits and adding 95,000 new enrollees through the Affordable Care Act exchanges.
 
In unified voices echoing across the busy hospital entrance, the RNs, members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, sang out, “Kaiser: safe staffing now,” and “Chop from the top.”
 
“What we are doing today will have a ripple affect that will travel all the way to the White House because Kaiser is the leader in the healthcare industry and golden benchmark for the Affordable Care Act,” said Kaiser Oakland RN Clarita Griffin. “This is bigger than Oakland, bigger than California. That is why we are here to send a loud and clear message to Kaiser to thrive, not deprive.”
 
Over the past year, Kaiser Oakland RNs have filed more than 1,400 reports to hospital managers of what they believe to be unsafe care, double the number of such reports the previous year. The filings, they say, reflect examples of how patient care has suffered as a result of fewer RNs and point to the growing patient care crisis at the Oakland facility.
 
CNA Co-President Zenei Cortez, a Kaiser South San Francisco RN, noted that Kaiser made $2,7 billion in profits last year, yet is continuing to make cuts in staffing and patient services. “They make profits off the backs of the sick, and that’s not right.”
 
In Oakland alone, Kaiser is attempting to cut 75 nursing positions in the move to the new hospital. But RNs across all units said that they are responsible for more patients per shift than ever before. The reduction in direct-care RNs comes at a time when six out of 10 insured Californians have Kaiser, a number that is expected to increase significantly under the ACA.    
 
“We’re out here today because we’re getting ready to move to the new Kaiser Oakland facility and the current conditions are already difficult,” said Katy Roemer, a Kaiser Oakland RN and CNA Board member. “We have insufficient resources, patients are facing long waits in the emergency department, they are put in ‘observation’ instead of being admitted and they are put in lower levels of care than what they require.”  
 
 “Kaiser has proposed cuts in the nursing staff for the new hospital and we’re already understaffed in the current facility,” said Oakland RN Yolanda Owens.
 
“Every single day we’re talking about how are we going to manage the new hospital if this is what’s already happening,” Owens said. “There is a lot of turnaround, patients returning three days in a row, discharged and back the next day. And some of the people who are at home really need to be in the hospital. All we’re asking is take care of the patients. This is not a fast food business. We’re trying to be holistic in our care but we don’t have the tools and the time. It’s a factory.”  
 
“They have this logo that says ‘Thrive,’ but if we’re understaffed we can’t thrive.  Members pay their premiums and they deserve the care,” said Owens. “We have to fight to deliver the product that Kaiser promises the members.”
 
Among the cuts cited at Kaiser Oakland:
 

• Elimination of transitional care units (TCU) where patients require close monitoring.  Instead, these patients will go to general medical surgical floors where they can’t be adequately cared for because nurses have responsibility for more patients, a trend that has been occurring with intensive care unit patients as well.
• RNs in the neonatal intensive care units are being assigned an unsafe number of critically ill infants from one or two at most to three.
• Women in labor now spend hours in the waiting room and in triage before they are admitted to their own rooms due to lack of available nurses.
• Longer wait times for admission to the hospital from the emergency room due to lack of available nurses to care for them.
• A plan to eliminate all heart monitor technicians whose primary responsibility is to watch for abnormalities in heart rhythms. RNs will be expected to carry phones that will display their patients’ heart rhythms, which will alarm when rhythms change. Serious safety issues have been reported in Kaiser facilities using these devices, including dropped or missing pages, resulting in missed changes in heart rhythms.

View photos from the rally!

INSIDE THIS UPDATE:

1. Kaiser RNs Condemn the Downgrading of Care for New Oakland Hospital

2. Sutter Tracy Community Hospital Proposes Nurses Accept Short-Staffing…

3. California Nurses Join National March for Climate Action

4. Alta Bates Summit RNs Warn Staffing Shortages Pose Increasing Risk for Patients

5. California Pacific, San Francisco, RNs Say ‘Yes’ to CNA

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Kaiser RNs Condemn the Downgrading of Care for New Oakland Hospital

Kaiser Permanente registered nurses will be holding a vigil Thursday to denounce major patient care reductions proposed for the new Oakland facility which is currently under construction and expected to open this summer, the California Nurses Association announced today. Kaiser is attempting to cut 75 nursing positions in the move to the new hospital. But nurses across all units said that they are responsible for more patients per shift than ever before. The reduction in direct-care RNs comes at a time when six out of 10 insured Californians have Kaiser, a number that is expected to increase significantly under the Affordable Care Act. —California Nurses Association, 02/26/14 More »

Sutter Tracy Community Hospital Proposes Nurses Accept Short-Staffing and Deteriorating Conditions

Registered Nurses at Sutter Tracy Community Hospital (STCH) will hold an informational picket on Thursday to protest management’s continued refusal to take serious action on substantive contract issues after over twenty months at the bargaining table. Safe patient care has been a key focus in contract negotiations between Sutter management and the nurses who voted in March 2012 to affiliate with the California Nurses Association, the state’s largest organization of RNs. Management continues to thwart the bargaining progress and stifle RNs efforts to improve conditions at the hospital, nurses say. —California Nurses Association, 02/25/14 More »

California Nurses Join National March for Climate Action

As a national march convenes Saturday morning in Los Angeles for action to address the growing crisis of climate change, registered nurses will be on hand to highlight the human toll of the climate crisis. A 9 a.m. rally at Wilmington Waterfront Park in Wilmington, Ca, adjacent to C Street near the port will be followed by a march, which is the first leg of a national series of actions intended to build public demand for real solutions to address the worsening climate crisis. —CNA/ NNU, 02/25/14 More »

Alta Bates Summit RNs Warn Staffing Shortages Pose Increasing Risk for Oakland, Berkeley Patients

Over the past year alone, Alta Bates Summit RNs have submitted to hospital managers some 500 reports of what they say are unsafe assignments required of the RNs. Yet hospital officials routinely ignore the problems and fail to fix the problems that are now widespread affecting units throughout the Oakland and Berkeley hospitals, RNs note. —California Nurses Association / NNU, 02/12/14 More »

California Pacific, San Francisco, RNs Say ‘Yes’ to CNA

Resisting a heavy-handed pressure campaign by their employer and frontline managers, registered nurses at California Pacific Medical Center’s Pacific campus, Sutter Health’s largest hospital in San Francisco, have voted to join the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United. —California Nurses Association, 12/16/13 More »

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California Nurses Association

National Nurses United

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With the clock ticking down on a final decision by the Obama administration on Keystone XL, it’s time to update why the nation’s largest nurses organization is opposed to a project that looks more like a pathway to pollution than a gateway to our gas pumps.

Citing the threat to public health and how the project would hasten the climate crisis, nurses have been on the front line of protests against Keystone, a 1,700-mile pipeline that would transport 830,000 barrels of dirty tar sands oil every day from Alberta, Canada to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, largely for export.

Here’s a top 10 of reasons why National Nurses United opposes Keystone and a critique of some of the main arguments for it:

1. No jobs on a dead planet
More jobs are certainly needed, but even the just concluded State Department assessment conceded Keystone would support only 35 post-construction jobs.
Infrastructure repair and promoting a green economy is a far better solution for the jobs crisis than a project that NASA scientist and climate expert James Hanson famously calls “game over” on the climate front.

If the threshold issue is jobs, nurses should support the pipeline as a full employment act in the volume of additional patients sickened by the pipeline’s health hazards and toll from accelerated climate change. But nurses see an inseparable link between environmental justice and the health of our communities and planet.

2. Don’t drink the water
From the ground to the pipe to the refineries, Keystone’s tar sands oil, with its thick, dirty, corrosive properties, pose a far greater hazard than conventional oil – a major reason for NNU and nurse opposition. 

Toxic contaminants in the massive water needed for extraction are infecting clean water supplies with towns nearby Alberta experiencing spikes in cancer deaths, renal failure, lupus, and hyperthyroidism. Huge pipeline spills near Marshall, MI and Mayflower, AR. have led to respiratory ailments and other health ills. Pollutants from tar sands refineries are linked to heart and lung disease, asthma, and cancer.

3. And don’t breathe the air
Mounds of Petcoke, the carbon residue of tar sands refining, piled up for export for burning, have produced toxic dust storms that have left area residents gasping near Detroit, Chicago, and other locales.

Canadian scientists are also alarmed at mercury “wafting” into the air from tar sands production which, in chronic exposure, have been linked to brain damage.

4. An asthma nation
Nurses see an explosion of asthma sufferers, especially children. More than 40 percent of Americans now live in areas slammed by air pollution with levels of particle pollution that can also cause higher incidents of heart attacks and premature death.

Keystone will multiply carbon emissions and speed up climate change resulting in more polluted air, higher air temperatures which can also increase bacteria-related food poisoning, such as salmonella, and animal-borne diseases such as West Nile virus.

5. The gathering storms
In the last year alone, we’ve seen the worst cyclone ever to hit landfall, fueled by sub-surface ocean temperatures 9 degrees above normal, the largest recorded tornado ever recorded, record droughts, and other unprecedented weather anomalies. While some discount the link to climate change, there’s no dispute that the past decade was the hottest on record.

Nurses, as NNU’s RNRN volunteers can attest, treat the human collateral damage, thousands of patients affected by Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda in the Philippines, for example, who endured life threatening injuries and loss of their homes and livelihoods.

6. The carbon bomb  
All workers and their families live in the same communities affected by the climate crisis and the pipeline health hazards. Despite naysayers who insist there is no environmental justification to block it, there is as much scientific consensus on Keystone as there is on the human hand behind the climate crisis, or the factual evidence of evolution.

In addition to Hanson, who calls Keystone “the biggest carbon bomb on the planet,” dozens of other prominent scientists signed a 2013 letter stating “the actual and potential environmental damage (are) sufficiently severe to reject Keystone to protect the climate, human health, and the multiple ecosystems this project threatens.”

In simple terms, Keystone would generate the carbon emission equivalent of 40 million more cars or 50 coal-fired power plants every year.

7. Not headed to your gas pump
Contrary to the myth, Keystone would contribute little to U.S. energy independence.  The oil is headed to Texas ports for a reason – to be shipped overseas.  TransCanada, the corporation behind Keystone, balked at a Congressional proposal to condition approval on keeping the refined oil in the U.S., and reports say TransCanada already has contracts to sell much of the oil to foreign buyers.

8. Pipeline or bust for the tar sands industry
Proponents insist that if Keystone is blocked, the tar sands crude will just be shipped by rail. Many disagree, among them a pro-pipeline Canadian think tank that predicts without Keystone, “investment and expansion will grind to a halt,” a view shared by the International Energy Agency, Goldman Sachs and some oil executives.  Increasingly, it appears, the pipeline is the linchpin for tar sands development.

9. Which side are you on?
In one corner, the American Petroleum Institute, the oil billionaire Koch Brothers, other fossil fuel giants, the far right American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and politicians they influence – the same folks behind the attacks on unions, worker rights and health care and social justice reforms.

Standing with NNU in opposition are every major environmental group, farmers, ranchers and community leaders along the pipeline pathway, First Nations leaders, many clergy, most Canadian unions, and U.S. transit unions.  

10. A last word, from Robert Redford
 “The more people learn about the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, the less they like it,” says actor/environmentalist Redford. “Tar sands crude means a dirtier, more dangerous future for our children all so that the oil industry can reach the higher prices of overseas markets. This dirty energy project is all risk and no reward for the American people.”

RoseAnn DeMoro is executive director of National Nurses United and a vice president of the AFL-CIO

Reposted from Common Dreams, Huffington Post, Daily KOS, and Firedog Lake

by Rose Ann DeMoro

With the clock ticking down on a final decision by the Obama administration on Keystone XL, it’s time to update why NNU is opposed to a project that looks more like a pathway to pollution than a gateway to our gas pumps.

Citing the threat to public health and how the project would hasten the climate crisis, nurses have been on the front line of protests against Keystone, a 1,700-mile pipeline that would transport 830,000 barrels of dirty tar sands oil every day from Alberta, Canada to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, largely for export.

Here’s 10 reasons why:

1. No jobs on a dead planet

More jobs are certainly needed, but even the just concluded State Department assessment conceded Keystone would support only 35 post-construction jobs.

Infrastructure repair and promoting a green economy is a far better solution for the jobs crisis than a project that NASA scientist and climate expert James Hanson famously calls “game over” on the climate front.

If the threshold issue is jobs, nurses should support the pipeline as a full employment act in the volume of additional patients sickened by the pipeline’s health hazards and toll from accelerated climate change. But nurses see an inseparable link between environmental justice and the health of our communities and planet.

2. Don’t drink the water…

From the ground to the pipe to the refineries, Keystone’s tar sands oil, with its thick, dirty, corrosive properties, pose a far greater hazard than conventional oil – a major reason for National Nurses United and nurse opposition.

Toxic contaminants in the massive water needed for extraction are infecting clean water supplies with towns nearby Alberta experiencing spikes in cancer deaths, renal failure, lupus, and hyperthyroidism. Huge pipeline spills near Marshall, Mi. and Mayflower, Ar. have led to respiratory ailments and other health ills. Pollutants from tar sands refineries are linked to heart and lung disease, asthma, and cancer.

3. …And don’t breathe the air

Mounds of Petcoke, the carbon residue of tar sands refining, piled up for export for burning, have produced toxic dust storms that have left area residents gasping near Detroit, Chicago, and other locales.

Canadian scientists are also alarmed at mercury “wafting” into the air from tar sands production which, in chronic exposure, have been linked to brain damage.

4. An asthma nation

Nurses see an explosion of asthma sufferers, especially children. More than 40 percent of Americans now live in areas slammed by air pollution with levels of particle pollution that can also cause higher incidents of heart attacks and premature death.

Keystone will multiply carbon emissions and speed up climate change resulting in more polluted air, higher air temperatures which can also increase bacteria-related food poisoning, such as salmonella, and animal-borne diseases such as West Nile virus.

5. The gathering storms

In the last year alone, we’ve seen the worst cyclone ever to hit landfall, fueled by sub-surface ocean temperatures 9 degrees above normal, the largest recorded tornado ever recorded, record droughts, and other unprecedented weather anomalies. While some discount the link to climate change, there’s no dispute that the past decade was the hottest on record.

Nurses, as NNU’s RNRN volunteers can attest, treat the human collateral damage, thousands of patients affected by Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda in the Philippines, for example, who endured life threatening injuries and loss of their homes and livelihoods.

6. The carbon bomb

All workers and their families live in the same communities affected by the climate crisis and the pipeline health hazards. Despite naysayers who insist there is no environmental justification to block it, there is as much scientific consensus on Keystone as there is on the human hand behind the climate crisis, or the factual evidence of evolution.

In addition to Hanson, who calls Keystone “the biggest carbon bomb on the planet,” dozens of other prominent scientists signed a 2013 letter stating “the actual and potential environmental damage (are) sufficiently severe to reject Keystone to protect the climate, human health, and the multiple ecosystems this project threatens.”

In simple terms, Keystone would generate the carbon emission equivalent of 40 million more cars or 50 coal-fired power plants every year.

7. Not headed to your gas pump

Contrary to the myth, Keystone would contribute little to U.S. energy independence. The oil is headed to Texas ports for a reason – to be shipped overseas. TransCanada, the corporation behind Keystone, balked at a Congressional proposal to condition approval on keeping the refined oil in the U.S., and reports say TransCanada already has contracts to sell much of the oil to foreign buyers.

8. Pipeline or bust for the tar sands industry

Proponents insist that if Keystone is blocked, the tar sands crude will just be shipped by rail. Many disagree, among them a pro-pipeline Canadian think tank that predicts without Keystone, “investment and expansion will grind to a halt,” a view shared by the International Energy Agency, Goldman Sachs and some oil executives. Increasingly, it appears, the pipeline is the linchpin for tar sands development.

9. Which side are you on?

In one corner, the American Petroleum Institute, the oil billionaire Koch Brothers, other fossil fuel giants, the far right American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and politicians they influence – the same folks behind the attacks on unions, worker rights and health care and social justice reforms.

Standing with NNU in opposition are every major environmental group, farmers, ranchers and community leaders along the pipeline pathway, First Nations leaders, many clergy, most Canadian unions, and U.S. transit unions.

10. A last word, from Robert Redford

“The more people learn about the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, the less they like it,” says actor/environmentalist Redford. “Tar sands crude means a dirtier, more dangerous future for our children all so that the oil industry can reach the higher prices of overseas markets. This dirty energy project is all risk and no reward for the American people.”

Originally appeared in Common Dreams

Affinity Medical Center registered nurses will be joined by members of local unions and community supporters in a celebratory show of support for RN Ann Wayt on her first day back to work Thursday after a federal court ordered the hospital to reinstate her, announced the National Nurses Organizing Committee-Ohio (NNOC-OH). Affinity is also ordered to retract the report it made to the Ohio Board of Nursing seeking to have her nursing license rescinded.

Affinity nurses, (L-R) Betsy Miller, Wendy Fetzer & Lisa Byer, and others will welcome fellow RN Ann Wayt back to the hospital on Thur., Feb. 13, 2014.

Carrying bagpipes, flowers, and paper lanterns, a group of Wayt’s RN colleagues will be on hand to greet her and will accompany her into the hospital. Nurses from units throughout the facility will send a flower every hour of her initial shift as an ongoing reminder of their support.

A ruling, issued January 22 by U.S. District Court Judge John Adams of the Northern District of Ohio, delivered a sweeping cease and desist injunction requiring Affinity Medical Center to end its lawless behavior in refusing to bargain with its registered nurses and engaging in repeated illegal discipline and harassment of its RNs. First bargaining sessions are set for February 21 and 24.

Watch and share this supportive video of Sen. Brown welcoming Ann Wayt back to work!

Show your support…

Leave a welcome message for Ann on this Facebook page!

Stay updated on these issues by following us on Twitter @CHSnurses

Read and share the full press release with details and the federal judge ruling.

Worth Noting…

Community Health Systems Inc. (CHS) is a Fortune 500 company based in Franklin, Tennessee, and is the parent company of Affinity Medical Center. Since recently closing a $7.6 billion purchase of Florida-based hospital chain Health Management Associates (HMA), CHS is now the largest provider of general hospital healthcare services in the United States in terms of number of acute care facilities.

A Pattern in Corporate Care…

Two California hospitals, also owned by CHS, wrongfully terminated nurses who were union members and had been outspoken on labor issues.

Amplify your voice and your care with the union made of, by, and for RNs!

National Nurses United
NNOC-Ohio
2000 Franklin Street
Oakland, CA 94612

RNs Protest Management’s Efforts to Undermine Patient Care

The Registered Nurses at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward conducted a candlelight vigil today to protest management’s stalling in negotiations for a first contract and refusing to address issues that are fundamental to quality patient care.

Listen to the news report on the vigil by KPFA

In December 2012, after several years of mismanagement at St. Rose, the RNs voted to affiliate with the California Nurses Association. Since that time, RNs have actively sought to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement that preserves some of their existing standards, and also improves them so that RNs can provide the best patient care. The nurses and their bargaining team have focused on standards that also address the retention and recruitment of experienced RNs.  Management, in turn, is attempting to extract almost a dozen concessions on standards that have been in place for many years.
 
Over the past few months, nurses have filed a growing number of ADO or Assignment Despite Objection forms with managment to document their concerns. These include, failure to provide adequate training to RNs who are caring for patients undergoing highly specialized medical procedures such as neurosurgery, chronic short staffing in all units, and requiring RNs to work overtime, through their breaks and on weekends. Nurses at St. Rose have not received a cost of living increase in five years and management now proposes to reduce salary increases and sick leave pay, which are already below those in other area hospitals.  

“Management is currently proposing provisions that will lead to attrition in the level of experienced RNs,” said Marlene Wong, RN. “St. Rose is a community hospital that serves many uninsured and low income patients and they deserve quality patient care from experienced, competent staff, just like anybody else.”

“St. Rose nurses have weathered the hospital’s trials and tribulations and now they deserve to be appreciated for their hard work and dedication,” said Vaishali Bhakta, RN.”With the takeaways on the bargaining table right now, RNs that have provided years of service and have a deep connection with the community, will feel compelled to leave for other hospitals in the area where they can provide better, safer care.”
 
“Through thick and thin we have struggled to do the best for the patients,” said Tricia Munoz, RN. “St. Rose needs to recognize this and provide a safe level of staffing at the hospital and a fair contract in step with nursing standards in the rest of the region.”

We are traveling on a narrow road from one barangay, or Philippine village, to the next. Along our way, we see palm trees bent in the middle, bowing their tattered heads toward our caravan, evidence of the storm. The smell of burning debris is everywhere as people burn the remnants of their lives, intact before the arrival of Typhoon Haiyan, known as Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines. The roadside is littered with this burning debris. The sun is hot above us. Dark smoke curls into the pale blue sky.

We are a team from the RN Response Network, part of National Nurses United. I am traveling with nurses dispatched from across the United States to the Philippines as part of RNRN’s disaster relief efforts on the island of Panay. These registered nurses have left their lives behind for a short while to help people suffering from injuries, exposure, respiratory illness, and more. During their stay here, nurses will treat people who already had limited access to healthcare, even before the typhoon.

As we travel we see that some people, with help from friends and neighbors, have already started to rebuild their homes. When we stop for water the sound of people hammering new roofs on skeleton houses rises above the noise of the tricycle taxis rushing by. We get back into our van. Girlie Garnada, an RN from Florida, was born in the Philippines. She marvels at the community rebuilding together against incredible odds.

“It’s Bayanihan,” she explains to the other nurses. “It’s means helping each other. That’s what we do,” she says with pride. Everywhere, the Philippine philosophy of Bayanihan is in evidence.  Neighbor feeds neighbor. Friends offer their labor to friends. And when the nurses provide care, the gifts arrive in abundance. Women and children bring food and candy…anything they have…to the nurses, even though they have little left to give.

Each day we get up early and travel one to three hours to a site arranged by the Alliance of Health Workers, a member of Global Nurses United (GNU), and our partner in the Philippines. This week, the Alliance has arranged for us to work with a group of doctors and nurses volunteering from Singapore. Our duties have taken us to various schoolyards and community health centers, where we set up tables and chairs on the hot pavement while volunteers set up huge tents from sheets of plastic balanced on bamboo poles and tied together with rope and string.

Today we arrive at Barangay Cano-an. Our medical mission there takes place in a bright yellow community center. When we arrive, people eager for care have already surrounded the building. RNRN nurses respond by immediately organizing a triage area and confer with other healthcare workers to smooth the way for patients. Soon, everyone is lined up around RNs Girlie Garnada and Stella Auto, who facilitate intake, while Lora Cook, Anna Rathbun, Betty Sparks, Ashley Forsberg, Jane Sandoval, Lori Barmore, and Paolo Montenegro work triage like a well-oiled machine. RN Gandessa Orteza takes on the role of ringmaster, calling out names and asking patients to “step right up” to move the line along. Inside, RNRN NP Betty Woods works with the doctors.

Later, one of the Singaporean doctors pulls me aside. “Your nurses are top-notch,” he says. “They are great to work with!”

It comes as no surprise to me.

I was in Haiti with nurses and I can liken what I saw there to a Superbowl game. When you see what football players do up close, you realize that they have a special, even miraculous talent. When a player runs fifty yards at full speed right before your eyes, it blows you away. When you see a nurse take action that results in changing a life, you get the same rush, only better. Because a nurse’s talent actually saves lives. And what nurses do, and the dedication with which they do it, is simply amazing.

In the Philippines, nurses aren’t just ministering to bodies, they are ministering to souls. Later in the week, we travel to Barangay Nipa at the water’s edge. It’s a tropical paradise of white sand next to a wide expanse of lush grass, littered with coconuts and pond fronds, broken boats and ravaged homes in the distance. Here I meet Noemi, who describes hiding under the table while her roof lifted off above her. “I saw metal spinning in the air,” she tells me. “I was afraid it would cut my head off!”

The trauma people have suffered is evidenced in sleepless nights, nightmare, anxiety, and trauma. One of our RNRN nurse volunteers, Stella Auto, a Veterans Administration nurse at home, counsels whole families in a separate building near the medical stations. “They need to talk about what happened. It’s better to talk about it, “ she says as we debrief on the way home. Nurses triaging in another building see evidence of the stress survivors of the typhoon are undergoing in elevated blood pressure and anxious faces. And everyone agrees that they’ve treated people who simply should have had access to healthcare in the first place. “We’re seeing illness that can be prevented with better care,” RN Ashley Forsberg says. “Everyone has the right to healthcare.”

It’s dark each night when we return to our hotel. We are exhausted, but we know how lucky we are. We know there is more to do tomorrow, and we’ll do it gladly. It’s the spirit we’ve adopted, the spirit we wish the world would embrace; Bayanihan – the spirit of communal unity and cooperation that is essential both to a deployment, and to a better life on earth. It’s the spirit that keeps the RN Response Network on the ground providing care long after the cameras are gone, believing, against all odds, in quality healthcare for everyone.

Please continue to support this RNRN relief effort >>

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Writer: Erin FitzGerald is a staff coordinator with RNRN, writer and video producer. She traveled with RNRN’s 4^th deployment in the Philippines.

USA/Philippines

UCLA Santa Monica Nurse Helps with Typhoon Aftermath in the Philippines

Fifth Deployment of Nurses Heads to Typhoon Ravaged Philippines

Austin Nurse Headed to the Philippines Part of National Nurses’ Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda Relief Effort

Chandler Mom, Nurse Jumps at Chance to Help After Disasters

UCLA Sends Second Nurse to Philippines for Typhoon Relief Effort

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Argentina

Nurses Continue Strike Until Tuesday

Nurses Seek to Be Recognized

The nurses Will Keep Measures in Force Until the 21st

Nurses Return to the Hospitals

After 41 Days, Neuquen Call Off Strike

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Canada

Health staff without flu shot risk consequences: nurses union

Nurses Wipe Insults from Patients

NS Nurses Welcome Clinic Reports to Ease Staffing Problems

Nurses’ Union holds Safe Staffing Summit in Truro

Saint John Nurses Assaulted by Patient in Hospital, Says Union

Alberta unions call proposed cuts to public pension plans unjustified

Nurses Unions call for end to cuts to nursing hours and retention of Canada’s 2013-2014 nursing

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France

Robots More Patients Than Nurses?

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Honduras

Auxiliary nurses demanding payment of 12 million Lempiras severance

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Ireland

HSE promises new beds to ease trolley numbers

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Nigeria

Health Workers’ Strike Hits Hospitals

Health Workers Strike Paralyses Hospitals

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Paraguay

Nurses Demand Payment at Treasury

Protest Continues by Nursing Workforce of the National Hospital

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Peru

Doctors, Nurses and Workers Try to Take Local Regional Government

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Spain

Nurses Say Enough

SATSE requires strengthening nurses in health centers because of the flu

Nurses Warn of the Risk of Privatizing Sterilization

Puerto Real Emergency Nurses Call for Reinforcements

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United Kingdom

Hospitals with Fewer Nurses on Wars than Mid-Staffs

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USA

Pressure Mounting on Call to Fight Hospital Price Gouging

Nurses Say Kaiser Oakland is Shortchanging Patients

Nevada Ranks 4^th Nationally for High Hospital Charges

Southwest Florida hospital charges well below state average

Baystate Franklin in Greenfield Declares Impasse in Nurses Labor Dispute

Nurses Picket for New Contract, Next Negotiation Session Is Friday

Hospital Declares Impasse in Negotiations

Nurses Protest Layoffs, Cuts at Alta Bates Summit Hospital

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Coming Up on Nurse Talk Radio

__________________________________

Listen and share the NNU segment:

Listen: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:23 — 16.8MB)

___________________________________

By Pattie Lockard
Executive Producer
Nurse Talk Radio

Charles Idelson Demystifies New Findings on Hospitals Price Gouging

Charles Idelson, CNA/NNU Director of Communications

SEE THE FINDINGS AND CHARTS

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Our fifth team of RN volunteers, part of the National Nurses United’s Registered Nurse Response Network, is currently in the Philippines to provide medical support for those who continue to be affected by the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda. The super typhoon killed over six thousand people, left almost two thousand missing and 4 million either homeless or with damaged homes.

The fifth RNRN team provides care at a medical mission site in Iloilo. They treated almost 700 patients in one day.

RNRN volunteers are providing basic medical care at a city health clinic in Roxas City, which is on the northern end of the island of Panay and was in the direct path of the storm. They also traveled to other sites, including Estancia, to provide medical care in affected areas as part of a medical mission with the Alliance of Healthcare Workers (AHW). At each site there were hundreds of patients lined up waiting to be seen when they arrived, and they have already provided care for over 1,500 people.

Please make a tax-deductible donation to the effort here >>

FUTURE EFFORTS: Directly Aid the People of the Philippines

“Now that the world is no longer focused on the devastation in the Philippines, it is even more important that we continue to lend our support,” said Bonnie Castillo, RN, director of RNRN. “We are working closely with our sister organization in the Philippines, the Alliance of Health Workers, to determine the most effective ways that we can be of assistance.” The Alliance of Health Workers and National Nurses United are both members of Global Nurses United, an international network of nurses’ organizations established last summer.

RNRN maintains its commitment to help the people of the Philippines heal and rebuild after this disaster. Our teams provide a continuous assessment of the needs on the ground, and we will work to provide what is most needed. We will continue to send RN volunteers as needed, along with financial donations to AHW to directly support the work being done on the ground.

Our RN volunteers have seen the devastation and the need firsthand. As Diane McClure, RN at Kaiser South Sacramento says: “We are honored to help these grateful people who are in great need. There are many areas that still have no assistance in regards to basic medical care. Many people are without homes or electricity. The recovery effort needs to continue far into the future.”

Patients at the clinic and medical mission repeatedly thanked our RNs for “still being here.” To all of you who have donated and volunteered to help, we thank you for making these efforts possible.

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RNRN, a project of National Nurses United, the nation’s largest organization of RNs, was formed in 2004 in the aftermath of the South Asia tsunami in 2004, when the need for nurses was not being met by traditional disaster relief organizations.  Since that time RNRN has send hundreds of direct-care nurse volunteers to assist following Hurricane Katrina, the massive earthquake in Haiti, and Super Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda.

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Thank you,

Bonnie Castillo, RN
Director, Registered Nurse Response Network
Registered Nurse Response Network
2000 Franklin St.
Oakland, CA 94612