California Nurses Win Grant to Improve Health Care

October 29, 2009

The United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP/AFSCME) has won a $60,000 federal grant to improve patient care at Riverside’s Parkview Community Hospital and Medical Center.

The union, which represents about 250 registered nurses at the Southern California hospital, will work with the facility’s Registered Nurse Advisory Committee (RNAC) to develop a customer service program intended to bring together patients, employees and physicians. Their goal: determine the best way to provide health care services.

The union says the grant, from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), should help foster “positive and effective labor-management communication and cooperation.”

“FMCS played an important role in getting us to our first union contract and continues to extend its support to ensure that we have a strong voice for patient care in the workplace as we work together with management to make Parkview better,” says Penny Brown, RN, president of the Parkview Registered Nurses Association. The association was formed as part of the RNs’ first contract negotiations between UNAC/UHCP/AFSCME and Parkview administration.

Brown says the RNs voted to join the union in 2008 “so that we could play a larger role in providing the highest quality of patient care possible.” She says the new grant, which ends in March 2011, will help the RNs realize that goal.

“Health care facilities that truly seek to provide the highest quality of patient care utilize all of the resources at their disposal, including their staff,” says Kathy J. Sackman, RN, president of UNAC/UHCP/AFSCME and an AFSCME International vice president. “The FMCS grant will help create an amicable working environment that will contribute to moving Parkview forward in a positive direction toward providing high quality patient care.”