Labor & Employment Law

Nurses Issue Urgent Call for Help in Haiti

By James Parks

National Nurses United (NNU) issued an urgent call last night through its nationwide disaster relief network to recruit nurse volunteers to assist residents of earthquake-devastated Haiti. Thousands are feared dead after the impoverished island nation was rocked by a 7.0 earthquake and severe aftershocks yesterday.

Details are still being worked out, but nurses can sign up at the NNU website, www.nationalnursesunited.org. NNU also will provide follow-up information at www.twitter.com/nationalnurses for details and plans.

Said NNU Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro:

We are calling on nurses throughout the U.S. to join us in this critical effort. Nurses will be fundamental to the disaster relief process, to provide immediate healing and therapeutic support to the patients and families facing the devastation from this tragic earthquake.

The Registered Nurse Response Network hopes to send nurses to provide emergency short-term and long-term medical support, as it has in previous major disasters. Following Hurricane Katrina, for example, hundreds of nurse volunteers worked with local health care and emergency agencies and officials in mobile clinics, area hospitals and other health care settings in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

The 150,000-member NNU was formed last month through the merger of California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, United American Nurses and Massachusetts Nurses Association.

This is the first of what will be many union responses to the earthquake. We will continue updates as information comes in.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 13, 2010 (boomark / email).