MASSACHUSETTS NURSE NEWSLETTER :: September 2007

President's Column

Beth Piknick

By Beth Piknick
MNA President

As you have no doubt noticed, this issue of our organization’s newsletter features an entirely new look and format—one that we hope our readers will find more attractive, informative and readable. We have moved to a smaller, magazine-style format with the aim of providing cutting edge news that the nurses can use, while still showcasing the MNA’s ongoing activities. We hope you like it and we invite readers to send us their comments on how we can further improve this publication.

We are also in the process of updating and revamping our Web site, which we hope to unveil in the New Year. All of this is part of our ongoing effort to make the MNA more appealing, more relevant and more useful for all our members.

In addition to our new look, we have a new and vitally important opportunity to finally pass legislation to regulate RN staffing levels in our state’s acute care hospitals. As this month’s cover story indicates, Oct. 24 is a key date in this process, as this is the date for the first public hearing for H.2059—our landmark bill to set a safe limit on the number of patients a nurse can be assigned at one time. The bill would also ban the practice of mandatory overtime and provide a variety of important recruitment initiatives to address the long term supply of nurses.

The need for this bill was given strong support last month when the DPH issued a report showing that as many as 2,000 patients a year die needlessly in our hospitals from hospital-acquired infections. The associated costs for these infections total more than $400 million annually.

In the months prior to the release of this report, two studies were published that made a direct link between RN staffing ratios and these types of infections. In fact, there have been no less than five studies published in the last seven months that validate nurses’ positions on this issue, which adds to the 25 other studies that have been published in the last five years.

The evidence is unequivocal and overwhelming: safe patient limits save lives, save millions of dollars in hospital costs and are the key to recruiting/retaining the nurses to meet the needs of hospital patients. Our case has been made. Last year we passed this bill in the House, and it would have passed in the Senate if it had been brought to a vote by the then Senate president.

Now we have more evidence, and a new opportunity, to push this bill on towards passage. To date, 107 organizations have signed onto the bill. Our support in the House of Representatives is stronger than it was last time around. We have a new Senate president and our support in the Senate is growing. We also have a sympathetic governor who is in support of this measure.

But our first step in this process is to get this bill out of the Public Health Committee, and that requires a strong showing of nurses at the State House on Oct. 24, as well as phone calls and e-mail messages to legislators from every nurse.

To contact your legislator quickly and easily, visit www.capwiz.com/massnurses. The campaign for this bill is gaining strength and with your help we will achieve victory.

You will notice that between pages 8 and 9 of this issue of the Massachusetts Nurse Advocate is a bumper sticker that promotes the campaign. We hope that each of you will take the time to put this bumper sticker on your vehicle, as it will become a powerful and visible symbol for the nurses’ campaign throughout the commonwealth.

Finally, I wanted to call your attention to Page 29 of this publication, which features a call for participation by nurses in a research study about the MNA and our recent experience in going through disaffiliation from the American Nurses Association. Barry Adams, a doctoral candidate at Brandeis University, is conducting an important study of this issue and its impact. We invite nurses who are interested to check out the ad and to participate in this study.