Nurses taking back Nursing
As we know, in recent events within our profession, problems can only poke at someone long enough until the beast of advocacy awakens. Long and behold a suppressed profession is taking a stand, my profession of nursing, with over 4.8 million Registered Nurses alone. The incident that occurred in 2017 with RaDonda Vaught is a prime example of owning your error and instead of the organization working through the several layers of system failures, the facility risk management department decided to take it a step further and retaliate against this nurse. Ms. Vaught is not the only nursing or medical professional that has made an error in giving, prescribing, and performing surgery on the wrong limb, even a minor procedure, this is how issues are fixed and prevented in the future by fixing the system failure. The trial of Ms. Vaught is a wake-up call to all nurses and those who are in the medical field.
Let’s talk about how we are treated as a whole in nursing. Before COVID, violence in healthcare was at an all-time high, where the American Nurses Association (2018) revealed from a poll of 14,000 nurses, 62% (8,680) reported they were verbally and physically abused; 1 out of 4 nurses physically attacked by patients (ANA 2018, Bolvin 2019).
December 2021, a Medscape report revealed out of 10,778 nurses reporting, Registered Nurses report emotional abuse from their manager/administrators 50%, and 43% co-workers — Verbal Abuse 75% admin/managers and 52% co-workers; Licensed Practical Nurses 55% admin/managers and 45% co-workers — Verbal Abuse 76% admin/managers and 43% co-workers (Medscape, 2021). In addition, patient on nurse physical abuse was reported at an average of 87% between both Registered Nurses and Licensed Practical Nurses (Medscape, 2021).
Alarming? Nurses and nursing assistants are leaving the bedside with organizations scrambling to figure out why. The proof is in the culture of the environment where the nurses and healthcare workers are working. Micromanaging, meetings, punitive reporting systems, EAP systems that are for the employer and not the person working through things they witness on the units, the list goes on! There is a fundamental defect in the systemic structure of healthcare that has worked hard to accomplish the task of turning nursing into a big business. This is the great disconnect. You cannot abuse your staff into submission to be something that we are not.
This is the call to action to support the HR1195 Workplace Violence bill that is in the Senate at the same time of the United Nurses March, along with HR3165 Staffing Ratios/Patient Safety & Quality Care Act and HR666 AntiRacism & Public Health Acts that are in the House of Representatives waiting for votes during Nurse’s Week. It is important that we contact our Representatives and Senate members to meet and support these bills. Furthermore, to have more protection to report facilities that abuse the system. This is Our time. With all of the abuse that we have suffered, we have to say this is the final stand and fight the good fight. We have to get louder and be advocates for what is right.
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