UnityPoint Health nurses in Des Moines have filed complaints with federal labor officials against the health system, accusing hospital administrators of trying to illegally discourage their union efforts.
Nurses at the four UnityPoint Health hospitals in Des Moines have announced their intention to organize a union through Teamsters Local 90 because of their discontent over nurses' compensation and working conditions.
Staff behind the union effort say hospital policies on pay has hurt nurse recruitment and retention, resulting in staff shortages. That, they contend, has in turned threatened to compromise patient safety.
To be sure, every presidential administration for the past 30 years has deported undocumented immigrants, though mostly at or near the border.
What feels different about this upcoming term — and why medical professionals will need to play a more active role in protecting their patients — is the scope. The specter of mass and potentially indiscriminate roundups feels more akin to the shameful internment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese American citizens during World War II.
Historically, health care workers have not always risen to the occasion when our patients have been targeted. Our recent history is tarnished by failures to report abuses or intervene at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, as well as by forced sterilizations of prisoners, women of color and people with disabilities.
But patient advocacy is integral to health care. Medical professionals constantly battle insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers to get our patients’ medical treatments covered. We tussle with our own institutions to expedite CT scans and medical appointments. We write advocacy letters for things like walkers and dental clearance and problems with bathroom mold and jury duty. But in this upcoming era we may have to face off against our own federal government.
The 159 nurses now on strike at Wilcox Medical Center, the largest medical center on Kaua‘i, say five minutes of delayed care can be a matter of life and death.
That is why they are striking, after the latest round of negotiations between the Hawai‘I Nurses’ Association and Wilcox management failed to reach an agreement regarding better staffing ratios of nurses to patients.
The three-day strike began at 7 a.m. Tuesday and is set to conclude early Friday morning.
Thousands of registered nurse members of National Nurses United, including many in Northern California, will be participating in marches and rallies on Thursday demanding safe staffing levels and patent safeguards with the introduction of artificial intelligence, the NNU says.
Ask anyone on the street what nurses do, and the most common response is likely to be that nurses care for sick people in the hospital.
Even many nurses themselves are probably of the mind that “real” nurses work in acute care. However, this could not be further from reality. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Nursing Workforce Factsheet, 55 percent of nurses work in “general medical and surgical hospitals.”
Considering that statistic, we can wonder how the other 45 percent of nurses earn a living. Ambulatory nurses comprise a sizeable segment of the nursing workforce, so there must be many good reasons why these individuals choose to work outside the hospital. Let’s explore four things you can definitely love about ambulatory nursing.
The Biden administration unveiled a tuition repayment program to incentivize nurses to work in nursing homes or state agencies that monitor them as it wraps up its final days in office.
President Biden's marquee policy to improve nursing home care — a national staffing requirement for skilled nursing facilities — is likely to be rolled back by the incoming Republican trifecta.
Registered nurses who work for three years in a qualifying nursing home or in a state agency oversight role can get up to $50,000 in tuition reimbursement and upfront incentive payments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, McKnight's Senior Living first reported.