There are significant gaps in regulatory efforts nationwide to keep nurses from avoiding the consequences of misconduct by hopping across state lines, even with a 24-state compact created to help get good nurses to areas where they are needed most. Under the decade-old partnership, a license obtained in a nurse's home state allows access to work in the other compact states. But an investigation by the non-profit news organization ProPublica found that the pact also has allowed nurses with records of misconduct to put patients in jeopardy. In some cases, nurses have retained clean multistate licenses after at least one compact state had banned them. They have ignored their patients' needs, stolen their pain medication, forgotten crucial tests or missed changes in their condition, records show.
Even as a national nursing shortage looms, many newly graduated registered nurses can't find jobs because the economic downturn has delayed retirement of experienced nurses, regulators and health care associations say. Those who find work often can't get the better-paying hospital positions they had hoped for and instead are turning to nursing homes, home health care or other settings, says Carylin Holsey, president of the National Student Nurses' Association. An advisory for new grads published by the association warns that the market is "flooded" with experienced RNs who have come out of retirement, delayed retirement or gone from part-time to full-time employment because of the recession.
Twin Cities nurses and hospitals turned their bitter labor standoff into a surprise settlement Thursday, concluding a suspense-filled day of secret talks and averting the biggest nursing strike in U.S. history. The 3 p.m. announcement stunned many members of the Minnesota Nurses Association, who had been bracing for a strike Tuesday. Instead of striking, they'll be voting on the agreement that day. At 1 a.m. Wednesday, the two sides had grimly broken off negotiations and announced that there was "no reason to talk." But by 11 p.m., they had quietly returned to the bargaining table and hammered out a tentative agreement, which was formally endorsed by the union leadership Thursday.
Can Twin Cities hospitals afford a strike? That's the pressing question as 14 metro hospitals prepare for a potential walkout by 12,000 nurses next week. In the short term, a strike would cost the hospitals millions of dollars for replacement nurses and millions more in lost revenue from lower patient volumes. In the longer term, there's the risk to their reputations, their profit margins and their credit ratings. Yet they appear willing to pay that price.
With a week to go before Twin Cities nurses could walk off the job in a massive strike, doctors are rescheduling surgeries, patients are reworking their calendars and everyone in the health care community is studying the lessons of previous nursing strikes. Pregnant women due in July are calling their doctors for reassurance that all will go well. Some Twin Cities doctors are gearing up to work with unfamiliar nurses. Others are applying for privileges at non-strike facilities.
Twin Cities hospitals late Tuesday night gave registered nurses a new contract proposal that included compromises on pension and staffing ratios, two key issues for the nurses. But the Minnesota Nurses Association rejected the offer in talks that lasted until about 1 a.m. Wednesday. No new talks are scheduled, said Maureen Schriner, spokeswoman for the hospitals. The nurses have called for a strike that is scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. on July 6.