Importance Of Nursing Unions

With the ANA support in March of 2010 President Obama proposed the Health Care Reform Act to help assure individuals better, high-quality, and affordable health care insurance coverage. ("Health care reform in the United States", 2010, p.1). "The health care is a human right, and will continue to fight on behalf of nurses and their patients to ensure that this is achieved" (Ana: Ensuring nurses, paragraph, 1). By attending and speaking at public health care events, being involved with other stakeholders like; Health Reform Dialogue (HRD) group, and along with staying up to date and in contact with the Congress and Capitol Hill the ANA shows it's involvement to achieving the goal that the health care reform act insures. Stakeholders and other health care professional organizations gather to speak about " health coverage, disease prevention, and increasing funds for education. These ideas are now being projected to the media and Congress (Ana: Ensuring nurses).

Mary Greeley Medical Center in Ames, Iowa is a unionized hospital, while Iowa Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines is a non-union facility. Both facilities strive to give its patients excellent care but the working conditions vary somewhat due to the difference between a union and non-union facility. From Mary Greeley’s I interviewed Mrs. Lorna Hamilton, the Emergency/Security Management Coordinator and from the Iowa Lutheran Hospital I interviewed Mr. Jeffrey L. Bebensee, the Security Manager. Both managers were familiar with the labor unions effect on their workplaces.

SEIU-UHW is a powerful, cutting-edge union of healthcare workers leading for better health, quality care, and good jobs. With 80,000 to 90,000 thousand members working in nearly every part of the healthcare industry, SEIU-UHW is the premiere, pre-eminent front-line voice on healthcare in California and has members with a creative, innovative and bold strategies to improve healthcare workers’ standard of living and make California the healthiest state in our nation; but can only make it happen with great members, Organizers and leaders utilizing award winning strategies and education campaigns and plans to reach the masses of workers throughout California.

The two largest umbrellas representing unions in the United States are: The first one is AFL-CIO created in 1955, the second one is the Change to Win Federation, which is split into 4 types of union, Teamsters (IBT), which is dedicated to Industrial Divisions that include virtually every occupation imaginable, both professional and non professional, private sector and public sector. SEIU, which is for service employees: health care including hospital, home care and nursing home workers; public services local and state government employees; and property services, which is for employee who works in the area of janitors, security officers and food service workers. The last one is for employees who work in the area of farm, which is called, UFW

The four spheres of political action in nursing as mentioned by Mason, Leavitt, and Chaffee (2011) includes the workplace or workforce, the government, the organizations, and the community. The authors further stated that although the four spheres overlap at times, the action performed in any one of these spheres can cause a reaction in any of the others. Nurses are a part of the community in which they live and can influence health and social policy within their workplace, which can have a profound impact on the organization. Furthermore, the government can pass health care policies, which in turn causes the organization to change their policy. Thus, affecting healthcare providers in the workplace and the community at large. An example of

In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA gave many Americans the opportunity to have health care coverage that previously may have not been available to them. The reform is primarily aimed at decreasing the number of uninsured and underinsured Americans. The landscape of health care is changing and nursing is evolving alongside it. This health care overhaul gives nurses a vital role in leading the reform revolution. With more than three million strong, nursing is the biggest sector of the nation’s health care labor

Other labor issues are long hours that nurses must work each shift, wages, benefits and working conditions. Healthcare organizations despise the unions but they are needed to ensure that nurses are compensated and they have a voice when it comes to certain issues such as compensation, working conditions, and management. If the organization concludes that they cannot afford what the union is

Union representation allows nurses to have voice and say in their working conditions and on issues that affect patient care. Union nurses may feel more comfortable verbalizing their dissatisfaction, because they have the union behind them to address their grievances. Through nurse union nurses is assuring they have a safe practice environment free of mandatory overtime and other work issues, and a voice in the resource allocation decisions that affect their ability to achieve quality health outcomes for patients .(Budd, K., Warino, L., Patton, M., (January 31,

As well as being notated as ‘eligible’, to work as a eligible midwife in private practice an eligible midwife must work in collaboration with a medical practitioner (Queensland Nurses Union, 2010). The Queensland Nurses Union (2010) explains that legislation specifies that eligible midwives working in private practice must operate under one of four collaborate models of care. These four collaborative models are as follows: Eligible midwives may be employed by an obstetric practitioner or an entity that employs an obstetric practitioner; eligible midwives may accept a written referral from a specified medical practitioner; eligible midwives may obtain a written agreement with a specified medical practitioner; or eligible midwives may have an arrangement with a specified medical practitioner (Queensland Nurses Union, 2010). The Queensland Nurses Union (2010) is concerned that this legislation will limit the ability for eligible midwives to work in private practice as unless eligible midwives are employed by medical practitioners, have women referred to them by a medical practitioner, or have an agreement with a medical practitioner, they will unable to work in private practice. Newnham (2010, p. 245) describes this as ‘creating a maternity service that is entirely within medical parameters, while seeming to advance midwifery models of care’

This addressed ways in which the nurses could increase their participatory involvement in their professional community. One of the most telling facets of the meeting was the in depth discussion of key issues and challenges within the nurse force. Many issues broached during the meeting included ethical, emotional, relational and corporate concerns. The discourse on these pervasive problems served a few functional purposes. Firstly, they explained issues commonly faced by nurses, allowing people to find a sense of common ground. The communal dilemma among all nurses suddenly became evident, in spite of their differences in education or background. This served to advance and evolve the nurses as a whole, making them more empathetic contributors to the healthcare field.

Outside Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, the largest nurses strike in U.S. history occurred. Over 12,000 Minnesota nurses went on strike, standing up for patient care and themselves. The nurses advocated for healthcare reform in which there should be a strict nurse-to-patient ratio. In response, the hospitals hired over 2,800 replacement nurses and temporarily reduced patient levels. This however, caused a rippling effect in which thousands of nurses around the country have planned and created strikes of their own. With the help of non-violence protesting, drastic improvements are being made within the healthcare system to this day as a result. At the majority of hospitals in the

There has been a pandemic apathy towards political activism among the nursing fraternity, despite the fact that politics to a greater extent affects the way these medical practitioners carry out their duty of providing care. Nurses have not seen any reason for political involvement citing that no direct relationship exists between nursing and political activism (Boswell, Canon and Miller 5). They claim that nursing is about application and service, demonstration by involvement and more of ‘walking the walk’ rather than the political ‘talking the talk’ (Rains and Barton-Kriese 219). Political activism to them is a waste of the precious time that could be used to provide healthcare to

The mission is successful negotiation of fair wages, safe working conditions and exemplary patient care. Can the nation’s labor unions help nursing healthcare professionals meet these mission goals? Battles are currently being fought to preserve and reform the Nation’s healthcare system. Along with proposed changes to the affordability and accessibility of medical care, healthcare providers will be faced with challenges of patient-to-provider ratios, rising costs, falling salaries/benefits and change in patient care roles. Will quality care be provided and will the

In a profession where others' health and well-being are priority, there leaves room for neglect of those who are delegated to care for these people. As a professional nurse, there are many obstacles that arise and affect the care provided to a patient, as well as the livelihood of the nurse. The current deteriorating and unsafe staffing conditions in hospitals and other institutions prompts workplace advocacy as the universally appropriate concept for maintaining professional nursing practice. The Arkansas Nurses Association and the Louisiana State Nurses Association define workplace advocacy as a planned, organized system of services and resources designed to support the professional nurse in the workplace (White Paper on

Nurses in Ireland had little to no influence on health care changes from the 1950s-1990’s. This was due to the fact that doctors were seen as the only authority figures. Nurses were not given the opportunity to become leaders until the 1990’s, when nurses began speaking on policy making. The first strike occurred in October of 1999 and lasted nine days (O’Dwyer, 2007). The strike included members of the Irish Nurses Organization and Psychiatric Nurses Association. The purpose of the strike was to help reform nurse education, obtain higher wages, and for nurses to gain more respect as health professionals (O’Dwyer, 2007).