Nurses Blow the Whistle on Rep. Armey

Enraged by accusations of Rep. Richard Armey (R-Texas) that hospital whistleblowers would lie about quality-of-care problems in order to gain leverage over their employers, 100 nurses from AFSCME and other unions converged on the U.S. Capitol in June.

This Emergency Mobilization of Nurses in-cluded lobbying for a Patients’ Bill of Rights with whistleblower protections. At a rally, legislators and nurses told stories of patient deaths from dangerously low staffing levels and poor quality care, and of firings and suspensions for staff reporting such problems.

Mary Lou Millar, RN, from Wallingford, Conn., and president of Connecticut Health Care Associates/ National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees/AFSCME Local 1199, told the story of Suzette Sewell, a registered critical care nurse at Columbia Audubon Hospital in Louisville, Ky., who was fired for telling her supervisor that she and other nurses were being switched to a unit for which they were not trained to administer care. (Sewell, a member of the Nurses Professional Organization/United Nurses of America/AFSCME Local 3911, is fighting for reinstatement.)

In a “Dear Colleague” letter, Armey wrote that with whistleblower protections, “Nurses in a hospital or doctors in a health plan could lodge complaints against the facility or the plan in order to generate negative publicity and thereby gain advantage in a collective-bargaining or reimbursement negotiation. They could even threaten to walk off the job with impunity if they decide they do not like their pay, hours, or other working conditions so long as they couch their complaints as concern for patient safety.”