Labor & Employment Law

Chicago Nurses Vote to Join National Nurses United

By Mike Hall

Some 1,300 registered nurses at the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) are the newest members of the National Nurses United (NNU).  The UCMC nurses voted last night to join the nation’s largest RN union.

The nurses say their top priorities are critical patient safety changes at the medical center, including improved patient staffing and an end to scheduling practices that undermine patient care conditions.

NNU Co-President Jean Ross says the UCMC nurses “have worked very hard to enhance patient care conditions and secure better standards for patients and nurses,” but faced management resistance. Now,

they will be right at home with RNs very much like them across the country, and will have the collective power of nurses from coast to coast behind them.

One intensive care unit RN at the hospital, says the nurses are concerned about “the future of patient care” at UCMC and a long history of hospital management

ignoring the nurses’ contract and our efforts to promote improved care conditions and professional standards that are necessary to protect our patients and promote the retention of experienced RNs and recruitment of new nurses.

The two key areas on which the RNs will focus are enhanced safe staffing with minimum nurse-to-patient ratios and an end mandatory shift rotation in which nurses are forced to alternate working days and nights. Studies have documented rotating schedules lead to performance deficits from fatigue, sleeplessness, and reduced alertness.

Another RN, says the hospital’s practice of shift rotation has “serious consequences”

for patient safety and can result in medical errors. It is disgraceful that the hospital continues to put patients and nurses at risk. With NNU representation, we are going to bring this practice to an end.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on May 21, 2010 (boomark / email).