Campaign to end RN short staffing gathering momentum
By SHERRY HALBROOK
PEF’s campaign to end short-staffing of nurses at state facilities is rolling through the state, one hospital, one prison, one psychiatric center at a time.
With the rallying cry: “Resuscitate nursing; the life you save my be your own!” PEF nurses are calling on state lawmakers to enact legislation aimed at putting an end to chronic short staffing and the mandatory overtime that has become a way of life at too many state health care facilities.
Every nurse, everywhere
Nurses met at more than 15 worksites throughout the state in January, and more meetings are planned for February. So far, the tentative schedule includes: Regions 5 and 6, Feb. 1; Sullivan Correctional Facility, Feb. 6; Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, Feb. 9; and Rockland Psychiatric Center and Helen Hayes Hospital, Feb. 13.
Among the materials being distributed to the nurses at these meetings is a new PEF pamphlet on nurses’ rights to help RNs understand the law and their contract, and how to deal with situations that could threaten their professional licenses.
Save NY Nurses... Condition
Critical
(See nurses’ campaign ad.)
PEF is currently analyzing the results of a broad-based survey it conducted in December of problems faced on the job by its direct-care nurses. Those results will be used to support the staffing campaign.
This month, PEF is bringing together its labor-management chairs from state agencies that provide health-care services to develop plans for addressing nurse staffing issues at each worksite. These individualized, but coordinated, plans will then be the basis for a consistent across-the-board effort to deal with the issues through the labor-management forum.
Buttonholing lawmakers
State legislators in late December received hundreds of holiday cards from PEF nurses and other members and supporters reminding the lawmakers to pick up where they left off last summer and support legislation that limits mandatory overtime for nurses.
PEF hopes to begin holding regional nursing forums in late February to bring nurses together with their state legislators to discuss how these nursing issues affect health care in their communities.
The PEF Nurses Committee will also deliver a special Valentines Day mandatory OT message to lawmakers in Albany.
And the Legislature and governor will get a wake-up call on May 2, when PEF nurses join their counterparts from 1199 SEIU (Service Employees International Union) and the NYS United Teachers for a rally at the Capitol.
Also, PEF is urging the legislators to schedule a public hearing this spring on nursing issues.
The Communicator February
2006
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