The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) offers for the second year scholarships for the Nurse in Washington Internship (NIWI) program – Sunday, March 13, to Tuesday, March 15, 2011, Washington, D.C.

Sponsored by the Nursing Organizations Alliance, a coalition to create a strong voice for nurses, the highly regarded three-day internship gives clinicians a chance to learn how to advance healthcare agendas on a local, state and national level through the legislative process. NIWI provides advocacy and public policy training, role-playing exercises and opportunities to meet with Capitol Hill representatives.

Michelle Legg – RN, BSN, CCRN, coronary care nurse, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond – received a 2010 NIWI scholarship. She encourages nurses to apply for this year’s program saying, “Political activism is an avenue to help you help your patients. This is a great educational opportunity to learn how to extend that advocacy.”

AACN offered 21 NIWI scholarships in 2010. Applicants must be AACN members and submit a plan that shows how the program will help their professional development. They must assess gaps in their health policy knowledge and skills; identify what they want to learn; and explain how they will evaluate their learning.

The application deadline for NIWI scholarships is Nov. 1. Applicants must be accepted by the NIWI program, a process that requires a separate registration. Visit www.nursing-alliance.org for NIWI information and www.aacn.org/scholarships for information about the expanded AACN scholarship program, which provides qualified learning opportunities to members year-round.

Source:
American Association of Critical-Care Nurses

Scholarships Available For Nurse In Washington Internship Three-Day Program, Nursing Resource Admin

Registered nurses from Children’s Hospital Oakland, voted overwhelmingly this week to authorize their nurse negotiators to call a three-day strike if necessary to protest ongoing management efforts to sharply reduce healthcare coverage for nurses and their families.

No date has been set for a strike, and additional contract talks are scheduled over the next two weeks.

The nurses say the unwarranted changes would leave Children’s RNs far below community standards offered by other Bay Area hospitals, seriously undermining the ability of the hospital to retain experienced RNs and recruit new nurses needed for children served by the hospital.

Further, the nurses, who are represented by the California Nurses Association, charge that Children’s management is trying to push the costs of its bad management practices on to the backs of nurses and other employees with sharp reductions in healthcare coverage. Last month, more than 200 RNs and other hospital employees, who the hospital also wants to penalize with healthcare cuts, picketed the hospital.

“Generations of nurses worked hard to win the standards we have today, especially here at Children’s Hospital,” said emergency room RN Anna Smith, one of the nurse negotiators. “My generation is not going to lead the way turning the clock back. Hands off our healthcare.”

“Cutting health benefits for nurses, other hospital workers, and our families is an unfair and unnecessary way for the Hospital to make up for years of bad management,” said Martha Kuhl, CNA treasurer and a hematology-oncology RN at Children’s.

Children’s concession demands are proposed in bargaining for a new collective bargaining agreement. The hospital wants to dramatically increase costs for the existing health plans in an effort to steer everyone into a single plan and out of the plan most RNs are in, disrupting long-standing relationships with medical providers, the nurses say.

The hospital spent $8.9 million on compensation in 2008 for the 26 top administrators, including social club memberships and $560,000 in severance pay for two short-term executives, yet would “save” less than $2 million a year from its punitive healthcare takeaways, an indication of distorted priorities and poor management practices, says CNA.

Source:
California Nurses Foundation

Children’s Hospital Oakland RNs Authorize Strike, Cite Management Demands To Slash Healthcare Benefits, Nursing Resource Admin

The first team of registered nurse volunteers from California, Michigan, and Washington State will depart for Haiti Wednesday morning with the Department of Defense’s Continuing Promise, National Nurses United (NNU), the nation’s largest organization of registered nurses, announced. The volunteer RN team will be treating patients in Haiti and Columbia during their month long deployment.

The group is part of a continuous series of assignments of volunteer RNs from NNU’s Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN) which included working onboard the USNS Comfort, the critical Navy relief effort that cared for the most seriously injured following the disaster, and Hopital Sacre Coeur (HSC), the largest private hospital in northern Haiti.

Teams of RN volunteers will be based aboard the USS Iwo Jima, a Navy amphibious ship, in one-month rotations from July to November. They will be working in makeshift clinics on the shores of Haiti, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Guyana, and Suriname.

“I had been traveling in Haiti with another nurse and we had left the day before the earthquake,” said Brook Casipit, an RN from Seattle, Washington with previous disaster relief experience in Central America who is part of RNRN’s first Continuing Promise team. “We had just arrived in the Dominican Republic when we heard about the disaster and tried desperately to return to volunteer, but were not able to find an organization on the ground to work with. I am delighted to finally be able to volunteer my service through RNRN.”

The first team consists of NP’s and RNs with a background in women’s health, disaster relief experience, and many have recent experience in Haiti including:

Cherie Thurner, an RN from Michigan, who went with RNRN to Sacre Coeur Hospital and has been on 13 medical mission trips to Haiti over the last 13 years. She has been on two medical missions in the country following the January earthquake and worked disaster relief following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

Amanda Howard, an RN from the San Diego area, who spent six weeks in Haiti after the earthquake and established pre- and post-natal care in an existing clinic.

Jane Ernstthal, a San Francisco Bay Area women’s health nurse practitioner with clinical experience in Malawi, Kenya, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Haiti, where she conducted family planning trainings for local clinicians.

Brooke Casipit, a Seattle, Washington recovery room RN who has trained local midwives in Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua. “We have learned from our experience in Hurricane Katrina that the kind of skills needed in the weeks and months following a disaster are nursing skills,” said Bonnie Castillo, RN, director of RNRN. “The kind of care that’s needed is everyday care, and things are exacerbated by the lack of medication and basic first aid. Wounds fester and spread. Something that was preventable ends up a life-threatening situation. Nurses are the heart of a long-term recovery effort.”

Source: California Nurses Association

National RN Relief Group Teams Up With Navy For Medical Mission To Haiti, Nursing Resource Admin

The American Nurses Association (ANA) applauds the introduction of federal legislation that empowers registered nurses (RNs) to drive staffing decisions in hospitals and, as a result, protect patients and improve the quality of care.

On the heels of the introduction of the Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act of 2010 (S. 3491/H.R. 5527), hundreds of registered nurses from across the country flocked to Capitol Hill last month to meet with their congressional representatives, emphasizing that insufficient nurse staffing can be a life-or-death issue for patients and that federal legislation is needed to ensure that hospitals don’t limit resources in a way that harms patient outcomes.

The RN Safe Staffing Act, crafted with input from ANA, has sponsors from both political parties – Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) and Reps. Steven LaTourette (R-OH) and Lois Capps (D-CA), a nurse.

“We know that nurses across the country are deeply concerned about unsafe staffing because it puts patients at risk, as well as puts nurses’ careers on the line,” said ANA President Karen Daley, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN. “Nurses observe all the time how insufficient nurse staffing diminishes the quality of care for patients. We won’t stop advocating on this issue until federal legislation is enacted to increase protections for patients and ensure fair working conditions for nurses.”

Research has shown that higher staffing levels by experienced RNs are linked to lower rates of patient falls, infections, medication errors, and even death. And when unanticipated events happen in a hospital resulting in patient death, injury or permanent loss of function, inadequate nurse staffing often is cited as a contributing factor.

The bill would require hospitals to establish committees that would create unit-by-unit nurse staffing plans based on multiple factors, such as the number of patients on the unit, severity of the patients’ conditions, experience and skill level of the RNs, availability of support staff and technological resources.

ANA backed a similar staffing bill in the last Congress. This version includes new requirements that a hospital’s staffing committee be comprised of at least 55 percent direct care nurses or their representatives, and that the staffing plans must establish adjustable minimum numbers of RNs per unit.

ANA has a long track record of advocating for safe staffing conditions for the nation’s registered nurses, through development of ANA’s Principles for Nurse Staffing in 1999, work with legislators and implementation of a national nursing quality database program that correlates staffing to patient outcomes. In 2007, the association launched its “Safe Staffing Saves Lives” grass-roots campaign, calling on nurses to become advocates. Nearly 1,000 RNs have sent their personal stories to ANA, describing how insufficient staffing on their units has put their patients in jeopardy, overwhelmed them with unmanageable patient loads, and, in some cases, driven them from their jobs.

The safe staffing bill would require hospitals that participate in Medicare to publicly report nurse staffing plans for each unit. It would place limits on the practice of “floating” nurses by ensuring that RNs are not forced to work on units if they lack the education and experience in that specialty. It also would hold hospitals accountable for safe nurse staffing by requiring the development of procedures for receiving and investigating complaints; allowing imposition of civil monetary penalties for knowing violations; and providing whistle-blower protections for those who file a complaint about staffing.

To date, seven states have passed nurse safe staffing legislation that closely resembles ANA’s national approach to ensure safe staffing. Those states are Connecticut, Illinois, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Texas and Washington.

Source:
American Nurses Association

Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Bill Introduced In Congress, Nursing Resource Admin

Nearly 7,500 registered nurses have now signed up to volunteer for Haiti disaster relief, believed to be the largest outpouring of RN volunteers in U.S. history, reports National Nurses United which is coordinating the effort, and working around the clock to find locations for the nurses to deploy on the ground in Haiti. Nurses from other countries are signing up through the NNU program as well.

“As reports of dire medical care shortages continue to pour in, we have thousands of registered nurses willing and ready to travel to Haiti,” said NNU Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro. “We are doing everything in our power to get these nurses engaged as quickly as possible.”

DeMoro said the NNU is in contact with the federal government and is also willing to work with other nations that are part of the international relief effort. “We know that the few remaining medical facilities in Haiti and those who are now on the ground are completely overwhelmed. In this enormous human tragedy, it is vital to get the nurses deployed rapidly.”

NNU, the largest union and professional organization of U.S. nurses, which has also sent hundreds of volunteers on past disaster relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina, the South Asia tsunami, and Southern California wildfires, is presently organizing the first team of nurses for deployment.

“Registered nurses are particularly skilled professionals who are needed to assess and treat patients and their families and to assess their environment. It is not possible to have a comprehensive care and recovery process without RNs. We need to get nurses there quickly,” said NNU Co-president Karen Higgins, RN.

Additionally, NNU is asking for hospital to provide paid relief time for nurse volunteers – several systems have already agreed to do so – and asking pharmaceutical and insurance companies to donate vaccines for the volunteer nurses and other medical supplies to bring to Haiti.

NNU also requests tax-deductible donations to fund travel and supply costs for the RNs. Donations to Send a Nurse to Haiti may be made on line at http://www.NationalNursesUnited.org. Updates are also available @NationalNurses on twitter or by following: #haitiRN.

Source
California Nurses Association

Nearly 7,500 RNs Ready To Deploy To Haiti – California Nurses Association, Nursing Resource Admin