As a nurse (of 31 years), I read with pride yesterday the National Nurses Movement's Daily Kos diary on the nurses in the Baucus committee hearing doing what they do best--advocating for American patients by asserting that health care must be a Right not just a privilege in this country. They were arrested for their advocacy.
As a professional group, nurses consistently rate #1 or #2 on public surveys as being the most trusted profession....number one or two consistently! Senator Baucus, do you really want to go down this road? Do you really want to anger the largest professional group in this nation? It takes a lot for us nurses to get to this point of indignant frustration, but guess what, WE ARE THERE NOW! We are not going silently away this time because we are tired....
We are tired of health care administrations "down-sizing" their nurse workforce to cover the cost of the CEO's million dollar salaries and unnecessary hospital building expansions. We are tired of caring for increasingly ill patients because they couldn't afford to seek care when they first became sick. We are tired of working shifts where we can't provide appropriate/effective nursing care because hospital administration allocates our nursing care based on numbers not on acuity of the patient's condition. We are tired of telling soon-to-be new grad nurses that what we taught you in nursing school can't truly be achieved in this current health care environment. We are tired of watching patients die and families grieve because they couldn't get the care they deserved when they needed it. We are tired of this dysfunctional health care system! We are tired.
Nurses, this post is a call to action. We know how to heal this sick and ailing American health care system. We will gladly bring our collective voices to the discussion table. We know what to do--ask us!! And since we have not yet been asked, let's get verbal. Call your congressional reps. Call your State nurse's organization. Follow the leads and links provided by the National Nurses Movement posted yesterday. Call Senator Baucus' committee members, every one of them. Bring it on Senator Baucus. Bring it on health insurance industry lobbyists. Bring it on all deniers of health care as a Right! Follow Florence Nightingale's lead--speak up and take action!!
It's not good to piss-off the nurses. You know, nurses, the ones who chose to work 24/7 caring for and comforting the sick, injured, and most vulnerable in our society. Yeah, that profession! Calling all nurses....let's roll!!!