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Spring 2004

From your special representative Anne Goldman

It isn’t news to nurses that membership in a union translates into job security, better wages and decent working conditions. But that’s just part of the job done by unions. When its members are professionals, the union must work to improve conditions in the field, too, by identifying critical problems in health care and offering solutions management may not want to accept but that better shape how care is delivered.

Anne Goldman

As Federation of Nurses/UFT members, each one of us has on ongoing interest and an opportunity to help our union identify such issues. Our recent statewide convention passed resolutions written by the Federation of Nurses/UFT that identified legislative priorities and set the year’s agenda. Our statewide lobbying effort on critical workplace issues such as mandatory overtime, nurse-patient ratios, and overtime pay is balanced by our commitment to reinstating essential funding for Medicaid services and for restoring vital budgetary items covering home care, hospital care and funding for nursing education.

We also joined hands with two other major health-care unions for a massive Capital steps rally condemning mandatory overtime and demanding specific safe nurse- patient ratios.
Such efforts shows what nurses can do when we work together, for ourselves and for our patients. Many of you have participated in these events and I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your participation and support.

Representing the front lines of rank-and-file nursing puts us in position to respond to health-care challenges and shape health care practice. But we’re not the only ones doing the responding. Remember that employers and nursing administrations also strive to maintain their regime of control over staffing, nursing education and overtime. Even as we argue for clear nurse-patient ratios that protect quality patient care, employers and others say each institution should define its own staffing. Even as we argue that identifying specific ratios takes the burden from the employer, it’s a burden they’re willing to bear if it means using ratios as a bargaining chip.

As health-care professionals we have an obligation every day to provide each person with quality care without exception: requiring New York State to provide each health-care
consumer with the highest level of care, and not simply whatever they can spare on a particular day.

It’s also time to realize that all nurses — whether you work in an ICU, an OR, in home care or med-Surg — must be concerned about working conditions. Successful nursing practices requires a safe therapeutic environment along with ongoing efforts to recruit and retain staff.

Together the new nurse and the seasoned veteran can create an environment of learning, sharing and —above all — quality patient care. The correct mentoring, orientation and motivation of our new colleagues means patients will not be harmed as our seasoned veterans retire. Let’s be sure nursing continues to strive for excellence and not compromise with numbers crunchers and mediocrities in the future.

— Anne Goldman