Emily Cupps nurse
"Like many of my colleagues, I am dismayed by your statement that critical access hospital nurses “probably play cards for a considerable amount of the day” and your ludicrous amendment strictly limiting our shifts to eight hours.
I can only conclude that you have no idea what nurses do. Let me explain using your mischaracterization as a metaphor.
If, when you said that we spend our days “playing cards”, you meant that nurses must operate within a set of rules, you are correct. There are many rules we must follow in nursing. We are trained to understand the principles of physiology, epidemiology, pharmacology, psychology, and ethics. We abide by the constantly evolving policies, protocols, and pathways of our specific facilities. We must comply with the regulations of multiple government entities. For the nearly 70,000 of us that practice in Washington State, that means we are subject to the Revised Code of Washington as well. The intention of SHB 1155 was to amend the rules already in the RCW that are intended to protect all Washington workers, but need some clarification in our particular circumstances. Your amendment ignores the purpose of the bill in favor of arbitrary restrictions on our livelihood. Yes, in our job we must play by lots rules. Our expectation of you in your job is that you write the best possible rules for us and our patients.
Possibly, when you said that we spend our days “playing cards”, you meant that nursing is strategic. You’re right. As nurses, we must assimilate a wide variety of information and make strategic decisions to do what is best for our patients. A bedside nurse might be caring for six patients at a time. We only have limited time and resources to meet the needs of our patients. Their needs can change very rapidly and require us to adapt to them just as quickly. Charge nurses, case managers, or nursing supervisors might be balancing the needs of even more people, though in different ways. Regardless of our roles, we are constantly prioritizing the needs of our patients, the needs of our unit, and our own needs, even when those needs might sometimes compete. We’re also tracking dozens of data points at any one time: vital signs, intake and output, and many other monitoring parameters, not to mention staffing needs, including whether or not our teammates have received breaks. All that to say we pay attention to detail and noticed that your proposal would take away much of our ability to choose a schedule that works for us and our families, actually increasing time at work for many nurses and without evidence that it would increase patient safety. Let’s also not forget that years of strategic input from nurses, unions, hospital administrators, and legislators went into developing SHB 1155. Yes, nursing is strategic, yet your comments dismissed and belittled our skills and your silly amendment undermined a bill strategically developed to benefit us and our patients.
Maybe, when you said that we spend our days “playing cards”, you were implying that nursing has high stakes. That would be accurate. Nurses are responsible for people's lives and well-being. Usually, we are the part of the healthcare team that spends the most time interacting with patients. We are often the first ones to notice when something isn’t right and our response may make the difference between complete recovery, long-term disability, or even death. Sadly, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in our country: some studies say errors may kill as many as 400,000 people a year. As if hundreds of thousands of lives weren’t high enough stakes, let’s put it in some terms more familiar to gamblers: the financial cost of those errors is about $19 billion a year. Now let’s talk on a more personal level. Many of us are confronted daily with tragedy, which takes an emotional toll. We are human and our responsibilities don’t just pause because we need to eat, pee, pump breast milk, or just take a minute to breathe. I’ve seen nurses get hurt at work and I have been on shift in a locked-down hospital under a violent attack. In the last month in South Carolina, there was a nurse who was shot, presumably not while “playing cards”, in the ER where he worked and a Louisiana nurse died as a result of injuries inflicted by a patient. She definitely wasn’t “playing cards” at the time; she was defending another nurse. Another nurse was criminally indicted for a medication error recently. My point is that nurses bear incredible responsibility in circumstances that are inherently difficult. We take on a multitude of risks to do what we do. We feel like it is reasonable to request protections that help us do our best for ourselves, our patients, and our communities. Please remember that when you make flippant proposals that affect our jobs you are gambling with extremely high stakes that affect essentially everyone.
You hold some very powerful cards in your hand. Please play them more wisely."
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