Massachusetts Nurse :: November/December 2005

MNA president testifies at State House on safe patient handling bill
With three key hearings in one week, MNA again leads way in health care advocacy

The week of Oct. 31 proved to be an important one for MNA members, nurses and other health care advocates, as it gave them a key opportunity to educate state legislators on three issues that are of critical importance to nurses and the citizens of the commonwealth.

Assault on health care providers

On Nov. 1 the Joint Committee on Judiciary heard testimony on H. 684, An Act Relative to Assault and Battery on Health Care Providers.

Currently only EMTs and ambulance drivers are covered under such a law, despite the fact that RNs are assaulted on the job at the same rate as police officers and prison guards.

This bill, sponsored by Rep. Michael Rodrigues (D-Westport) aims to make it a crime, punishable by up to two-and-a-half years in prison, to assault a registered nurse and/or other front-line health care professionals. The MNA filed this bill after one nurse member, who had been viciously attacked and beaten by a patient, was told by a court official that such treatment was to be expected—that such treatment was “part of her job.”

Safe patient handling

On Nov. 2 the Joint Committee on Public Health heard testimony on H. 2662, An Act Relating to Safe Patient Handling in Certain Health Care Facilities.
This bill, also filed by the MNA and sponsored by Rep. Jennifer Callahan (D-Sutton), would require hospitals to provide a system to assist nurses with safe patient handling in order to avoid injury. Recent studies show that nursing is the profession most associated with work-related muscular skeletal injuries, and that nearly 12 out of every 100 hospital-based nurses report work-related injuries (particularly back injuries). One-third of these nurses also reported that their injuries were directly connected to moving or lifting patients.

Beth Piknick, RN and president of the MNA, was among those who testified in the State House’s Gardner Auditorium. Piknick is also a victim of a debilitating back injury.

“As an ICU nurse, I suffered a career-altering back injury,” said Piknick. “Two decades of lifting, transferring and moving patients resulted in major spinal fusion surgery to repair three discs in my back. The simple love of my profession was not enough to allow me to continue the type of bedside nursing I used to do.”
She went on to say that instituting a policy specific to this problem, as called for in H. 2662, is the key to protecting nurses and to reducing the system-wide costs that are spent on treating nurses who are debilitated by otherwise preventable muscular skeletal injuries.

Piknick has led the MNA’s efforts to address this issue in order to protect nurses throughout the commonwealth, and she has been personally involved in the process of moving H. 2662 through the State House.

The issue of safe patient handling has gained significant attention in recent months and years. Currently, four states—New York, Ohio, Texas and California—have enacted similar legislation.

Help for essential hospitals

On Nov. 2 the Joint Committee on Public Health also heard testimony on H. 2666, An Act Further Regulating Hospitals.

This bill, filed by Rep. Jim Marzilli (D-Arlington) and supported by the MNA, would give the state the legal authority to intervene and save any hospital that is deemed essential to the health of the community it serves.

The bill was proposed in response to a growing crisis in Massachusetts—where free-market, cut-throat competition endorsed and perpetrated by the hospital industry through deregulation over the last 15 years has led to the closure of more than 30 facilities. Sadly, many—if not most—of those facilities were deemed essential to the health of their communities. Currently, hospitals slated for closure are only required to give notice to the public. DPH and, by extension, the state have no authority to intervene and protect the facility.

A case in point was the recent closure of Waltham Hospital. After notice was given of its pending closure, the DPH held public hearings and deemed the facility an essential service to the greater Waltham community. While the community rallied to keep it open, competing hospitals eventually worked to undermine the weakened facility and forced it into closure.

Residents of Gloucester are in the midst of a similar fight as they work to keep open Addison Gilbert Hospital, which has been struggling to survive in the face of numerous attempts by its corporate owner to gut its services and force its closure. Under the terms proposed in H. 2666, Massachusetts would have legal authority to intervene and save Addison Gilbert Hospital if it found that is essential to the health of the greater Gloucester community.