As a glimpse into things to come National Nurses United, the nation’s largest nursing union announced a one day strike for June 10, 2010 . The good thing is that most of us don’t believe RN’s and unionization make sense, (about 21% of RN’s are unionized according to the BLS) it run’s contrary to the notion of being a professional.
According to the press release, the strike is over nurse/patient ratio’s (a measurement of the cost of working as an RN) and protection against threats to retirement (a benefit of working as an RN, and perceived benefit of working under unionization) which is dubious.
What will be missing from this debate is the incredibly onerous process someone has to go through to become an RN, and the fact that nurses insist on doing everything themselves.
I know first hand how difficult it is to work as an RN. It’s hard work physically and emotionally, and I continue to have great respect for those who continue in the field. Still the training to become an RN, is difficult and expensive, though the exam to become an RN is not. I just spoke earlier with a woman seeking to be an RN with a 3.4 GPA and who can’t get in, clearly something is wrong here. I know it’s expensive to train an RN, but this is fixable when we have qualified individuals eager to enter into the field, but no room. This can be fixed.
Secondly, RN’s need to be able to relinquish tasks to others. I recall many times working in ICU when we’d have two to four highly trained RN’s in a room, just trying to get a patient out of bed. Clearly, this task didn’t require a team of all RN’s. I often wondered how much easier it would have been for the hospital to go to the local Golds gym, and hire a few guys with no neck to work a few hours helping with the heavy lifting; just how much do you need to know to do that?
It will be very interesting to see how this plays out, still it’s only the beginning. With the median age of RN’s approaching 53 years old, it doesn’t take a great deal of math to see that we have a problem in front of us which requires significant thinking and lots of leadership.
Thomas A. Coss, RN
