Massachusetts Nurse :: September 2005

Nurses in the News

Heywood RN scores “slam dunk”

Sue Carlson, an RN at Heywood Hospital in Gardner and co-chair of her bargaining unit, was recently interviewed by a reporter from the Sentinel & Enterprise for a July 25 article about safe staffing.

Carlson’s on-target comments had an effect beyond July 25 though, as her insights seemed to influence the paper’s editorial board to write a letter that turned out to be one of the MNA’s biggest post-July 13 wins.

In the July 25 article, Carlson explained that, “…(nurses) all say to each other, ‘When will it end?’ If mandatory staffing ratios went into effect statewide, both nurses and patients would benefit. When (I) entered the profession 30 years ago, you could care about your patients, and there was much more bedside care.”
Less than two weeks later, the paper’s editorial board used Carlson’s comments again as they offered a new perspective on the nursing crisis: “We (the editorial board) think lawmakers should take the best elements of both bills—the mandatory state-wide nursing-to-patient ratios of the (MNA’s bill) and the $30 million trust fund proposed in the hospital industry’s bill—and craft new legislation. To begin with, we think it's long past time to allow hospitals to set their own nursing to patient ratios, considering the unrest about patient care in Massachusetts and throughout the nation.”

Both the article and the editorial represented significant wins for the MNA in its fight for safe staffing, and neither would have happened without Carlson’s time, help and words of wisdom