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New
nursing group divides ANA: AARN piggybacks on CNA's success,
fights fornurse-staffing ratios
By: Jeff Tieman
February 11,2002 Issue
The Week in Healthcare
State nurses who broke away from the American Nurses Association
are forming a new, national organization that could broaden the influence
of the aggressive and action-oriented California Nurses Association.
The nascent group, called the American Association of Registered
Nurses, could initially represent as many as 70,000 nurses from California,
Massachusetts, Maine and Pennsylvania. Other states including Arizona,
Missouri and New York have expressed interest in possibly joining
the new association, organizers said. The ANA represents 2.6 million
registered nurses.
The new group's formation comes at a time when the nursing profession
has garnered national attention. Earlier this month two separate
studies quantified a "severe shortage of healthcare workers" that
includes a 13% vacancy rate among registered nurses. Meanwhile, last
month California became the first state to adopt minimum nurse-to-patient
ratios, a move that thrilled nursing groups but has been met with
resistance from other camps, including the hospitals that will have
to foot the bill.
At a meeting last week in San Diego, the state groups identified
legislative priorities for their new association, discussed workplace
improvements it intends to promote, and hired a lobbyist to represent
its interests in Washington. The AARN also would serve as a union
representing its members' interest in labor negotiations.
The AARN "is a chance for the hands-on, direct-care nurse, n matter
what the setting, to have a national voice and an eye and ear in
Washington to keep on top of what's happening," said Kay McVay, president
of the 40,000-member California Nurses Association.
The new group's supporters said the success the CNA has had in pushing
its agenda in California would move eastward as the AARN develops.
The CNA sponsored California's first-of-its-kind nurse-staffing law,
for which the state proposed ratios last month. Using the CNA's experience
and resources, the AARN could help make mandatory staffing ratios
more common, said Bill
Cruice, director of the 4,500-member Pennsylvania Association of
Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, another founding member.
Perhaps the most vocal and politically active nurse group in the
country, the CNA broke away from the ANA in 1995, citing the ANA's
lack of action on the legislative and labor fronts. The Massachusetts
nurses also left the organization nearly a year ago, and Maine's
nurses bolted from the ANA shortly thereafter.
The ANA "has been far too moderate in its position and has failed
in helping front-line nurses achieve safe working and practice conditions
and the clout they need to provide the care patients deserve," said
David Schildmeier, a spokesman for the 20,000-member Massachusetts
Nurses Association.
ANA spokeswoman Cindy Price said her group viewed the AARN "as simply
trying to emulate and duplicate what the ANA has and is already doing
... Splintering off creates more fragmentation, and it diminishes
the voice of nursing in political and policy arenas."
The ANA is the largest, oldest and best group representing nurses,
said Joseph Niemczura, who heads a 100-member ANA chapter in Maine.
The ANA's resources, he said, "would be impossible to duplicate."
But that's not how the new association's founders see the matter.
"If (the ANA) represented nurses it would be all right, but they represent administration
and possibly academia," McVay said. "They do not, in my opinion, represent direct-care
nurses."
The AARN has not been incorporated and has not applied for not-for-profit
association status, sources said. McVay said she was not ready to
say when the group would make its existence legally official.
[Modern Healthcare Magazine]
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