“They’re angels in disguise. Everything they’re asking for they’re absolutely entitled to.”
We thought you’d like to hear how patients in Minnesota reacted to the largest-ever strike.According to the Star Tribune, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, (Twin Cities nurses strike stays calm, but pressure on by JOSEPHINE MARCOTTY and CHEN MAY YEE, Jun 11, 2010), the day long strike was an opportunity to show their numbers and passion for patient safety showing up to picket in the damp and wind.As for the patients, according to the newspaper, “Outside United Hospital in St. Paul, a pregnant woman wearing a patient’s robe walked from the hospital to the picket line, spoke with some of the nurses, picked up a picket sign and went back inside.”At another hospital, a woman living near North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale, offered her bathroom to the striking nurses. A friend of Colleen Patterson, a patient recently discharged after a reported 25-day stay.”Patterson, wearing a baseball cap to cover the surgical scar on her head, sat in the back yard of the house, hugging nurses who showed up.””I hundred percent support the nurses,” she said. “They’re angels in disguise. Everything they’re asking for they’re absolutely entitled to,” reported the Star Tribune. READ MORE
13,000 California RNs to Strike June 10
The California Nurses Association announced that UC Medical Centers, plus several Ca. hospitals join forces over crisis of patient safety in state’s hospitals. As many as 13,000 registered nurses from hospitals throughout California are issuing a one-day strike notice Friday morning over patient care shortcomings at their facilities. READ MORE
The math doesn’t lie: The thinner nurses are spread in hospitals, the greater number of patients who die.
Big strike vote set in Minnesota, if approved would be the largest in U.S. history. Linda Hamilton, RN in the Children’s Hospital System and president of the Minnesota Nurses Association writes, “Everybody knows a nurse. And right now, more than 12,000 of us are in the fight of our lives with six different Twin Cities hospital systems…What are we fighting for? Nurses never have been and never will be in this profession for the money. We are in the profession for one simple reason – we care about you.” READ MORE