Massachusetts Nurse Newsletter :: April 2006
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PRST STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID Permit #2226 Worcester, MA THE NEWSLEttER OF THE MASSACHUSEttS NURSES ASSOCIATION www.massnurses.org VOL. 77 NO. 3 April 2006 Inside… More than 1,000 days without a contract Single-payer health care: Unit 7 members picket statewide Shifting paradigms .......................2 March 26 marked day 1,000 that state- Executive Director’s column: employed registered nurses and health Crunch time for safe staffing .......3 professionals have been without a contract, a situation that is preventing the recruitment MNA on Beacon Hill: and retention of the professional staff needed Saving essential hospitals .........4 to adequately care for the state’s most vulner- Nurse staffing briefs ..................4 able residents. Fair contract for Unit 7 ...............5 In response to this shameful anniver- sary the 1,800 members of the MNA Unit 7 Regional news .............................6 held informational pickets across the state. According to Bill Fyfe, RN and president Bargaining unit updates...............7 of the MNA’s Unit 7, they were picketing to show frustration over the lack of respect School nurses seek parity ...........8 being shown to members and their patients. “While we continue to be amazed at how Labor Education: long the Romney/Healey administration has Pickets, rallies, vigils ....................9 dragged this out, we are truly disheartened and angry by the negative effects it is having Health & Safety: on our patients,” said Fyfe. “Every day we see Fragrance-free health care ......10 experienced nurses leaving and the problems our administrators are having in hiring new Sexual assault nursing ..............12 experienced staff. This directly affects the quality of care.” MNA election information .....14-15 Unit 7 supporters, big and small, joined the picket line at Worcester State Hospital. “After a thousand days of either no or half- hearted negotiations, we have to wonder if interested in traveling the country to curry the veterans, the severely mentally ill and Nursing scholarships .................16 the Romney/Healey administration is truly favor with voters in his bid for the White the retarded.” committed to providing care to the state’s House while Lt. Governor Healey spends State-employed health professionals Free online CE courses .............19 most vulnerable patients,” said Fyfe. “It is her time campaigning for the corner office See Unit 7, Page 3 clear to us that Governor Romney is more rather than paying attention to the care of Continuing education .................20 Newton-Wellesley RNs Member discounts .....................21 Contact your legislator today BORN changes substance oppose Wal-Martization abuse rehab policies ................22 URGENT: Safe RN staffing update! of nursing practice MNA discounts ..........................22 The fight for safe RN staffing on We have all experienced it upon entering Beacon Hill is coming to a head! a Wal-Mart or upon visiting a restaurant chain—the false, preprogrammed welcome Mass. Nurses Foundation Discussion on a compromise bill is used by greeters and other staff designed to heated. You must let your legislators give the impression of good customer service: know that any compromise must “Welcome to Wal-Mart, is there anything I Annual Golf Tournament can help you with today?” include a safe limit on a nurse’s Most of us find these June 29 patient load. scripted conversations Details, Page 16 annoying in the retail State legislators MUST hear from industry, but now you. If you have taken action on this some hospitals are issue before please do so again! attempting to foist this “customer service” Please take action right now! approach onto health • Go to: http://capwiz.com/mass- .URSINGON"EACON(ILL care workers and one hospi- For the latest nurses/ to send a message to ,%')3,!4)6%50$!4% tal, Newton-Wellesley, recently tried to force developments its nurses to adopt these approaches. your legislators. All you have to The nurses would have none of it though impacting nurses, do is enter your name and address and your letter will be sent automati- and, through their union, they fought back to visit the cally. prevent the practice from being implemented. MNA Web site, In fact, the hospital wanted to make proper • Ask everyone you know to do the same. There is a letter on the Web site utilization of the new “customer service” www.massnurses.org for our non-nurse allies as well as for front-line nurses. standards the overwhelming basis for the nurses’ annual evaluation and, ultimately, • Keep checking the MNA Web site for updates and more information: subject those who violated these standards to www.massnurses.org. n See Newton-Wellesley, Page 13 Page 2 Massachusetts Nurse April 2006 Nurses’ guide to single-payer reform Shifting paradigms in health care: no place for marketplace thinking By Sandy Eaton, RN ity health care—including safe staffing and insurance industry into the driver’s seat. The the opportunity to join hands with our After all these years of campaigning for appropriate levels of care in the appropriate resulting damage to the integrity of the pri- colleagues around the globe who are cam- fundamental health care reform, it’s easy to settings—universal. vate sector has no comparison other than the paigning to maintain health care as a human get discouraged and feel that this fight, if not Now the market place may bring us cheap, havoc following the wholesale privatization right. On May 10, the state Legislature— hopeless, is at least unable to bring us to the fast computers (if we ignore the social costs of of state, county and municipal hospitals and meeting in Constitutional Convention, will next plateau. exploitation of factory workers in places like health services that had just begun to pick be able to move forward to November’s I think the problem is not just David Singapore and Taiwan). But health care does up full steam. ballot the proposed amendment to make fighting a too-powerful Goliath. (After all, not work that way, and efforts to market, for The marketplace mentality, with its “mar- access to affordable, comprehensive health Question 5 almost passed when placed on the example, cheap health insurance “products” ketplace morality” (as Cornel West would put insurance the right of all who reside here. 2000 ballot despite being outspent 50-1) It’s that leave people on the brink of bankruptcy it), is sacred dogma to the Bush and Romney When this measure comes to the floor, it not just the power and influence of insurance, before they kick in do nothing more than administrations, and accepted as revealed will win. When this amendment appears hospital and pharmaceutical interests that create the image that we’re really extending truth by too many other Republicans and on the ballot, this right will be affirmed by keep official discourse on expanded cover- coverage when all we’re doing is shifting Democrats. Globalization is marked by the the voters, with the help of all of us working age limited to cost shifting and dilution of costs and extending false hopes. spread of this ideology around the world. Our hard to overcome the expected attack ads coverage. In the market place, there are winners and nursing colleagues in Canada, as well as in from vested interests. The big problem that we need to face up losers. But in health care, we cannot afford New Zealand, Australia, Japan and Ireland— With the constitution amended we will to and defeat is the spreading contagion of any losers. indeed everywhere health care has been have a powerful tool to build a just health marketplace thinking. The theory goes that The sentinel event in Massachusetts was declared a fundamental human right—are care system here, and something that can all social issues can be resolved through the passage of Chapter 495, the deregulation fighting hard to resist the Americanization be replicated in other states and nationally. the blind workings of the unfettered mar- of hospital financing, in 1991. The hospital of their systems, with the emergence of profi- And we will pound a nail into the coffin of ketplace. This frame of reference hobbles industry, which was already experimenting teering and the atomization of society. the Bush and Romney agenda of profiteering efforts to make access to affordable, qual- with job reengineering, put the commercial Right now in Massachusetts we have at the expense of the rest of us. n Your support of health care amendment needed May 10 Constitutional Convention: Still essential, still crucial, still happening The health reform bill that the Legislature these reforms will require unprecedented History also tells us that even a ballot ini- your support for this important initiative by recently passed promises that 90 to 95 per- cooperation over the next three years by tiative for a law may not be enough. The calling your legislators at 617-722-2000. Or cent of the uninsured will be covered within stakeholders with very divergent interests people enacted the Clean Elections Law visit www.health careformass.org. n three years with affordable, comprehen- as they hammer out the details. The specif- only to be stalled and eventually repealed sive coverage. It launches an experiment to ics of the experiment depend on upcoming by the Legislature. The only major, progres- see if public program expansions coupled negotiations among regulators, stakeholders sive reform that has been fully implemented with market based reforms can fulfill that and advocates over benefit packages, cost, in Massachusetts—education reform—has a Join in the rally for promise. This experiment has never been penalties and much more. constitutional anchor backed up by the Su- performed anywhere else and policy experts We need the Health Care Constitutional preme Judicial Court. the Constitutional are divided over whether this approach can, Amendment now more than ever to make The Health Care Amendment creates a even in theory, create a health care system sure the promise of these current health constitutional anchor for reform that meets Amendment that is both affordable and sustainable over reforms are fulfilled and that we have the clear standards—affordable, comprehen- time.