Minnesota nurses up the ante: Strike date set for July 6

Please go on strike!!! My bags are packed and I’m ready to work as an RN and replace the nurses who choose to strike. I hope it’$ a long one!!

Comment by RN with 25 Years Experience — June 25, 2010 @ 5:55 pm

Whomever wrote this article sounds like a shill for the hospital industry. People go to a hospital for nursing care. Nurses are highly skilled and educated. They must be to manage the complex, ever changing patient care needs, technology, potent medications, etc. The nurse is responsible for evey aspect of a patien’ts care, including making sure the doctors orders are appropriate, but most important, the nurse is the patient’s ADVOCATE. The nurses’ primary interest is the patient’s best interest and this is often a source of conflict with hospital administration (whos interest is the bottom line). Thats what this is all about, the nurses are prepared to strike to ensure safe staffing for their patients. The nurses are the ones on the front line, at the point of care, making split second decisions that will impact their patient’s life or their quality of life for years to come.
“Perhaps it would make more sense to strike over patient ratios in a good economy”? Speak for yourself, Thomas Lee. I would bet most folks want to make it out of a hospital as well as can be in a bad economy as well as in a good economy.

Comment by katrina howard — June 28, 2010 @ 8:37 am

Tell me something Katrina. If I wrote a story that said YES, THE NURSES ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT ABOUT PATIENT RATIOS, would I be a shill for the nurses union? Ah yes, that’s right. The nurses union enjoy a monopoly on the truth. As the story notes, I see legitimate arguments on both sides. However, when I write the issue is not as clear cut as the MNA says, that makes me a shill for hospitals. Take a look again at what you wrote. It reeks of arrogance and self-righteousness, precisely the qualities that has not won you friends in the health care industry and will not win you friends in the public arena if you indeed go on strike.

Comment by Thomas Lee — June 28, 2010 @ 10:07 am

I am not sure there is any scenario where the MNA can save face in this case. It is walking a tightrope without a safety net right now. The tactic here was clearly to whip the members into a frenzy over “patient safety” and engender public sympathy at the same time. The MNA may, in fact, actually believe the claims that it has made; however, I think it much more likely that “patient safety” was merely a wedge issue and negotiating strategy — something to trade off against wage increase demands and protection of pension and health insurance benefits.
I think MNA has painted itself into a corner on all fronts. It will not prevail on fixed patient staffing ratios because it’s a show-stopper for the hospitals who will not (and should not) bargain away management perogatives.
I don’t know whether the strike will materialize or not. But I do think the dues-paying MNA members will, in either case, need to think seriously about cleaning house and removing union leadership that is clearly tone-deaf as well as their MNA hospital reps who have abandoned the “interest-based negotiation model” that has worked well in the past decades in favor of an adversarial style that isn’t selling well in the public or for a significant number of professional, dedicated nurses, either.

Comment by Bo — June 28, 2010 @ 2:32 pm

Looks like I struck a nerve Thomas Lee. A little on the defensive, are you? FYI, I am not a member of MNA but I support them 100%. I am a Registerd Nurse who quit hospital nursing several years ago specifically because of unsafe staffing and a less than honorable hospital administration that deliberately turned a blind eye to nurses complaints.
Here is just one example that I can give you that may hopefully help you understand the nurses plight. On one particular night a patient arrived in the ICU immediately after open heart surgery. The Anesthesiologist hooked the patient up to the monitor while the Respiratory Therapist connected the patient’s artificial breathing tube to the ventilator. The patient was unconscious and in a very vulnerable state. Report was given to the nurse assigned to him but she already had two other patients, one of which was extremely critical and required extensive and prolonged resuscitative measures. Five hours passed before the nurse was able to leave the critically ill patient to assess the new patient. That the the patient was on his own for 5 full hours is unconsciounable to say the least. The first several hours after heart surgery are very critical and require astute observation and complex nursing intervention to safely recover the patient. This was an excellent nurse but you cannot be in two places at the same time. The other nurses were just as busy and without the extra pair of hands from a charge nurse, whose position was eliminated, the nurses and patients were doomed. The night supervisor was busy someplace else in the hospital. That morning, several nurses demanded to meet with Nursing Administration.
The Administrator, with steel in her eyes, said, “well now, there was no harm done, was there”- ICU nurses have been told, “there will no longer be any 1-to-1 patient assignments” (like it is a luxury to take care of such sick patients). One nurse to 3 patients is not uncommon in the ICU anymore.
Mr. Lee, I could give you a hundred such examples where patient safety was compromised or the patient died because of unsafe staffing. I can also tell you that arrogant administrators discipline &/or terminate nurses for bringing these situations to light .Without mandated staffing ratios, hospitals are free to continue the unsafe staffing patterns which have caused harm to patients and driven so many nurses away.

Comment by katrina howard — June 29, 2010 @ 11:08 am