I'm getting a little tired of National Nurses Day being treated like another Hallmark holiday.

I know I'm not alone; I've been talking to the RNs in my hospital about this. So, we've decided today isn't going to be like any Nurses Day before it. This year, you can keep your flowers and candy. This year, RNs are demanding something real. We're calling a code on our broken health care system.

Click here to help us take back National Nurses Day: www.seiu.org/RNs2congress

One member of Congress, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) has always gotten how important nurses are to fixing health care. And she's asking RNs to make sure her colleagues get it, too:

"You are on the frontline of our failing medical system, so you know where we can cut waste, how we can eliminate bureaucracies, and what it will take to improve care.

Nurses are the most trusted messengers in this upcoming debate, and your voices are critical in shaping reform and ensuring its passage."

Will you help me call a code on health care? Dial toll-free 1-866-210-3678 to be connected to your Senators' offices. Click here to learn more: www.seiu.org/RNs2congress

I decided long ago it's not only my responsibility, but also my duty - to my patients and my fellow nurses - to stand up and lead in the fight for quality, affordable health care.

I hope you share that same sense of duty. If you do join me in calling a code today. Call 1-866-210-3678 to connect with your member of Congress. While you're on the call, click here to see a sample script and a report-back form on our website.

Thanks for speaking out for your patients,

Cathy Glasson, RN
Value Care, Value Nurses

P.S. If you're looking for a little inspiration, check out this video of Linda Bock at the White House. It's moments like these that National Nurses Day are all about.

Nurses in the Detroit area are celebrating a $13.6 million settlement reached with St. John's Health System in a class action lawsuit brought to expose attempts by area hospitals to hold down wages for nurses despite an ongoing shortage of RNs willing to work in acute care hospitals. "This [is] good news for everyone in Detroit who looks to these hospitals to provide quality care. Patients get better care when nurses have the staffing we need to meet their needs," said RN Cathy Glasson of the Nurse Alliance of SEIU.

According to a report by the Institute for Women's Policy Research commissioned by the Nurse Alliance of SEIU, over 1.2 million nursing positions will need to be filled nationally over the next five years. The report shows that the shortage may be due in part to artificially low wages caused by collusion among hospital employers. This settlement is an important step towards ensuring fair compensation for the nursing profession and helping to solve the nurse shortage crisis.

"By helping to ensure competitive methods for setting RN wages, we can attract more new nurses to the profession, bring non-practicing nurses back to the bedside, and improve patient outcomes," said Anne Jacobs-Moultrie, a registered nurse and VP of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers. Ensuring competitive wages for nurses would also benefit hospitals in the long-term by allowing facilities to meet their staffing needs without resorting to mandatory overtime or expensive temporary nurse agencies.

The landmark lawsuit filed by Detroit nurses over efforts by hospitals in their area to collude to hold down wages for RNs is moving forward. Federal Judge Gerald Rosen rejected arguments from Mount Clemens General Hospital in Michigan that the landmark suit has no merit and ordered the case to proceed.

"This puts us one step closer to giving direct care nurses a more powerful voice about how our profession deals with the chronic shortage of nurses working in hospitals. Nurses, our patients, and their families will all be better off when nurses' hard work is valued and more nurses can remain in their careers," said Cathy Glasson, RN, of the Nurse Alliance of SEIU. Read SEIU's statement here.

Nurses in Albany, NY reached a settlement in a class action case with Northeast Health, a network which has seven locations throughout the region and provides care for approximately 175,000 people each year. The lawsuit contends that Albany-area hospitals violated federal antitrust law by sharing confidential wage data and conspiring to depress wages by allegedly agreeing not to compete for the registered nurses.

The $1.25 million deal is the first settlement of five national lawsuits aimed at stopping hospitals from conspiring to depress nurse wages, and similar class-action lawsuits are moving forward in Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, and San Antonio. This class action lawsuit was filed in 2006 on behalf of thousands of direct-care nurses who were employed by Northeast Health between June 20, 2002 and June 20, 2006 and ultimately seeks to recover three times the amount that nurses in the class were underpaid.

This landmark legal settlement comes at a time when there is already an intense shortage of bedside nurses in the Albany area and throughout the country. According to a report by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, there is a shortage of more than 13,000 nurses in New York State alone and over 1.2 million nursing positions will need to be filled nationally over the next 5 years. About one in five newly licensed nurses quit within a year, according to one national study, and IWPR's report shows that the nursing shortage is due in part to artificially low wages caused by collusion amongst hospital employers in a given region.

Nurses hailed the settlement as an important step towards ensuring fair compensation for their profession and helping to solve the nurse shortage crisis, thereby improving quality of care for patients. "This is a breakthrough not only for nurses, but for the people we care for every day. For too long, hospitals cut corners when it came to valuing the hard work of nurses. Our hope is that this is the first step towards making sure that hospitals invest in the kind of quality care that patients deserve," said Cathy Glasson, RN, of the Nurse Alliance of SEIU.

I'm from Haiti. I hadn't been there in a while. When I heard about this trip I knew I wanted to go to help, but I didn't really know what to expect. My family and my Haitian friends and co-workers could understand wanting to help, but they were worried about my safety. They asked how I felt about traveling with a group of strangers and not knowing what I was going to face when I got there.

The group was great. We all got along fine. We stayed in a good hotel that had electricity and clean water. The hotels are very nice.

We were picked up at the hotel and taken to the mountains where the group had something like a healthcare fair with a lot of doctors. We provided care to many people, and especially lots of children.

Once we started working we were really busy. People who needed care were waiting, standing up all day, without food. We didn't eat either and we didn't care. We wanted to make sure we saw everyone who came for help. We worked into the night, in the dark, using candlelight so that we could see everybody that was there waiting. I was really shocked at just how many people needed our services. I visited a hospital and I really felt bad. They need all the help they can get-supplies, help, anything.

One evening it was dark when we were going back to our lodging. The road was not so nice...it started to rain. We had to cross a river. It wasn't that far, about one hour, but it seemed longer. Even though we were scared we were joking around. We had a lot of fun!

As I said, my family and friends were concerned about my safety. I felt very safe in the provinces. And really, if something is going to happen to me it's going to happen anywhere.

Now that I'm home, many people at work want to come with me the next time I go back to Haiti. People feel good about the helping part. It was a good, good thing. If they think about helping people it's good, because these people really need the help.

Eliane Joseph has been an RN for 10 years after being an LPN for 8 years. She was born in Haiti and has been in the United States for 20 years. Eliane has three sons. She enjoys providing care in the ICU at Coral Gables and she is a member of Executive Board of SEIU Healthcare Florida.

In light of the devastation in Haiti and the suffering of so many people in the aftermath of two hurricanes and two tropical storms, the Nurse Alliance of SEIU Healthcare leaders made a decision to offer support.

Two SEIU Healthcare Florida members volunteered to travel to Haiti on a healthcare mission organized with the Haitian American Professionals Association, Unite for Dignity and Harmony of the Divine Life--an organization that will keep us posted on future missions to deliver healthcare in Haiti.

We wanted to share the experiences of the two SEIU Healthcare Florida members - Angel Ruiz and Eliane Joseph - who spent a week providing volunteer healthcare services in Haiti. Their stories are truly inspiring.

(Photos of the Mission to Haiti can be viewed at the Value Care Value Nurses Flickr website.)

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From Angel Ruiz, SEIU/University of Miami Hospital

I've always had the luck to have what's necessary, to be able to share with others, and to feel thankful for everything and to give thanks to God.

In early October, I received an email from our Union President, Monica, which spoke about a health mission to Haiti during mid-November.

Read the rest of Angel's post.

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From Eliane Joseph, RN, SEIU/Coral Gables Hospital

I'm from Haiti. I hadn't been there in a while. When I heard about this trip I knew I wanted to go to help, but I didn't really know what to expect.

My family and my Haitian friends and co-workers could understand wanting to help, but they were worried about my safety. They asked how I felt about traveling with a group of strangers and not knowing what I was going to face when I got there.

Read the rest of Eliane's post.

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If after reading this account, you (or, if you're an SEIU member, your Local) are interested in sending volunteers, supplies or donations for the next Healthcare Mission to Haiti in January, please email Valerie.tate@seiu.org.

There has been long-standing debate within the nursing profession about the minimum degree required for professional nursing practice. Recently the debate re-ignited in New York with proposed legislation that would mandate the BSN for future RNs to continue practice beyond 10 years. This debate is of critical concern to the more than 17,000 SEIU registered nurses who work in New York State as well as to RNs across the country.

Position

• Credit for experience - a system needs to be developed by degree granting institutions to measure nursing competencies so clinical and academic credit can be granted to experienced nurses who demonstrate advanced knowledge in various scopes of practice.
• Development of systems of flexibility and support in the workplace so nurses can work while obtaining higher education
• Tuition assistance for nurses pursuing the BSN degree through a combination of federal, state, and employer funding
• Academic articulation between ADN and BSN programs to provide maximum transfer of academic credits
• An expansion of places in ADN programs and increased capacity at schools offering these degrees to ensure that there is a steady stream of new nurses moving towards a BSN degree while filling much needed nursing positions.
• Increased capacity at colleges offering the BSN degree to ensure that all qualified nurses have a place in accredited schools
• Satellite classrooms at healthcare institutions to maximize access and participation of the incumbent workforce.
• An increase in faculty nursing salaries to support more nursing faculty
• A provision to prohibit mandatory overtime as one of the barriers nurses face while pursuing their education.
• Support for programs that offer remediation and academic review for nurses who have been out of school for an extended period of time.
• Assistance to RNs not working in nursing to obtain their BSNs and re-enter nursing practice.
• Support for schools to develop on-line and hybrid programs to assist nurses who cannot attend on-site classes due to work and family responsibilities or because of the travel involved (particularly in rural areas).

(Sept. 1, 2008) WASHINGTON, DC - Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Executive Vice President and Nurse Alliance Chair Dian Palmer, RN, issued the following statement regarding the work being done by SEIU nurses and leaders across the country in anticipation of the health impacts of Hurricane Gustav:

"As Hurricane Gustav bears down on the Gulf Coast, leaders of the Nurse Alliance of SEIU Healthcare are mobilizing RNs and medical supplies to arrive as soon as possible to areas threatened by the storm.

"Drawing on their experiences as first responders to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the RN leaders have activated a rapid response system to be able to deploy first responders, and will be working with our partner hospitals and institutions to jointly collect and donate the needed medical supplies such as nebulizers, vaccines, gloves, masks, and medications necessary to deliver competent care to evacuees and victims of the impending storm.

"SEIU Value Care, Value Nurses RN Daniel Rubalcaba has been on the ground since Saturday in Beaumont, Texas, where he is caring for medically fragile patients at the Memorial Herman Baptist Hospital. Daniel is working with the union's national leadership and local authorities to determine and service the areas of greatest need.

"In 2005, SEIU deployed more than 100 RNs along with truckloads of medical supplies to provide care for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Along with the first responders, the union also sent two of its Mobile Action Center trailers to the area to provide phone and internet access to thousands of evacuees.

"Time is of the essence, and SEIU stands ready to do its part to assist the families that live in the storm's path. We will go as soon as feasible and we will stay as long as needed."

For up-to-date information on SEIU's relief efforts, or if you are a Registered Nurse interested in volunteering for the effort, learn more and sign up at www.valuecarevaluenurses.org.

The Nurse Alliance of SEIU Healthcare is the largest national nurse organization, made up of more than 85,000 registered nurses working together to raise standards for their profession and patient care. Because the Alliance is part of SEIU Healthcare - the nation's largest healthcare union - nurses are working with more than one million health care workers to change the face of health care in America.