Advocating for the Advocates
United Nurses of America's Seventh Nurses Congress brought together more than 300 professionals to gather information, develop skills and lobby for patients' rights — true examples of advocates in action.
Washington, DC
When Sue Ryan’s patients have a physical ailment, she has to be their voice, and often, their eyes and ears.
Thelma Capinpin’s patients are too young to speak for themselves.
The two nurses found much to share — and more to learn — at the United Nurses of America’s (UNA) Seventh National Nurses Congress in May. The theme of the four-day conference was “Patients’ Rights: Advocates in Action.”
Ryan, a licensed practical nurse in Onalaska, Wis., cares for the developmentally disabled in a nursing home. They can’t articulate their health care concerns and often aren’t taken seriously if they try, said Ryan, Local 1403 (Council 40) member, and secretary of the council’s health care advisory committee. “I think it’s my business to advocate for my patients.”
Capinpin, a registered nurse, faces similar issues as an obstetrical charge nurse in southern California. She has objected to a new record-keeping standard that she believes compromises care for the newborns, and she frets that the unit is “understaffed all the time.”
“Being an advocate for patients — that really gets me,” she says.
The 300-plus nurses who attended the conference — Capinpin and Ryan among them — “got” AFSCME Pres. Gerald W. McEntee’s message when he described the union’s efforts to make Congress pass “a real and meaningful Patients’ Bill of Rights.”
“You have an awesome responsibility,” he told the cheering nurses, “as the front, and sometimes last, line of advocacy for your patients.”
He described the organizing drive at MetroHealth, Cleveland’s only public hospital. In April AFSCME members from across the country joined in a “blitz” — an outreach effort to communicate with the hospital’s nurses about the value of unionization. With members of MetroHealth’s organizing committee, the volunteers made more than 260 home visits in just five days.
McEntee also spoke of AFSCME’s support for laws mandating safe needles and for ergonomics standards to protect workers from back injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome.
Up on the Hill. For Ryan and Capinpin, the afternoon they spent lobbying on Capitol Hill was the high point of the four-day conference.
Before they went up on the hill, they heard from the three nurses currently serving in Congress: Rep. Lois Capps, RN, (D-Calif.), Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, RN, (D-Texas) and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, RN, (D-N.Y.).
McCarthy noted the importance of nurses’ serving in government. “We look at the big picture,” she said. “Our goal is to make lives better. If we put more money into good health care, we will save on the other end.”
“I think it is my job to speak out for health care and health care workers,” said Capps. “Cost cutting has eroded nursing,” she said. “But hospitals with higher ratios of nurses to patients have lower rates of death.”
Johnson told the nurses about a Texas law “that allows the patient to sue the HMO. I believe that managed care is here to stay,” she said, “but we must be able to massage it until it suits the patient.”
Ryan had never lobbied before and was quite apprehensive — until AFSCME Legislative Department Director Chuck Loveless made his presentation. In addition to explaining some of the bills that were important to nurses, Loveless joined in a role-play exercise. He played a congressman, and nurses took turns asking him questions and describing their concerns.
“He really prepared us well,” says Ryan. “By the time we got there, I thought, 'I can do this.'” Ryan was happy her congressman supports the Patients’ Bill of Rights.
“I would like to lobby more,” said Capinpin — also a novice. “[Lawmakers] don’t know very much about what’s going on outside the capital. People who lobby are going to win because they are the ones elected officials are going to hear.” She was able to provide U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) with information about the problem of needlesticks.
Union building. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala told the nurses how critical passage of the Patients’ Bill of Rights is to the future of health care. “We ought to have a health care system in this country that puts patients first,” she said. “Sisters and brothers — and since I’ve been a union member, I can say that — together we can build the kind of health care system that America deserves. The kind of health care system that’s worthy of a union label.”
The last morning brought practical steps to win that kind of health care system — including organizing.
AFSCME International Secretary-Treasurer Bill Lucy gave all of the union’s nurses the best reason to organize: “The only thing that stands between the unabashed greed of the American corporate health care culture and the American health care consumer,” he said, “is the American labor movement and, in particular, AFSCME.”
By Susan Ellen Holleran
