Ebola: Not Bringing Out The Best In Us

Another nurse, Briana Aguirre, has been in the news following the death of an Ebola patient in Dallas.  She was on the Today show criticizing her hospital’s handling of the isolation procedures when the patient was cared for there.

Now, I’m all for nurses being protected and I do think it’s important for organizations to have the appropriate equipment to protect all health care workers, but I’m disappointed in this nurse’s behavior as well as Kaci Hickox’s behavior.  

Briana Aguirre said on the Today show that she “threw a fit” when the right equipment wasn’t available to her.  I would really rather the public see us as the smart and professional people that we are – not as those who throw a fit when things aren’t as we feel they should be.

Let’s face it, outside of the few hospitals in the country that have actual bio containment units, NOBODY in this country was prepared to care for an Ebola patient.  Not even the CDC really knew what to do.  

All Briana did as risk her own job and make us look bad as a group.  There are more professional ways to go about getting changes made. I wish Briana had employed one of them.

What's Her Deal?

I'd like to say that if someone suggested that I stay in my house for 21 days, I'd be thrilled.

Kaci Hickox apparently feels differently.  She's the nurse who was mandated to quarantine herself after returning from West Africa. 

The comments on the various websites and social media reports about her outrage against being quarantined are interesting.  Many nurses seem to feel that she's not representing us well by not taking threats to the public seriously.

I tend to agree. What's the big deal? 

Now today I see that she's reached a "settlement", that she's allowed to "roam free" but has to monitor her symptoms.

Is she shining a negative light on nurses?  Possibly.  Should we be doing all that we can to protect the public?  Yes.  I tend to hate all politicians, but they'd be in a much worse situation if they did nothing.

Get it together, Kaci, stay home and keep your mouth shut. Honestly, how would you feel if you did infect someone else?  Pretty bad, I hope.  You can't turn back time, do what you have to do to keep yourself and other people safe right now.

The Union Question

The hospital I just started working for has a nursing union.  It seems weird and somewhat impossible, but I truly had no idea.  I don't know the rules, but apparently it is not okay for the manager who interviewed me to bring this up.  I found out when I saw "union presentation" on the classroom orientation schedule.

Honestly, I would not have applied to this hospital had I known about the union.  Florida is a right-to-work state, so I'm not required to join the union or to pay dues to the union.  Personally, I'm against unions for nurses.  I know that many nurses are strongly pro unions for nurses.  I have many reasons and I feel I can look at the issue objectively, as I have been a member of a nursing union in one hospital for whom I worked and I have worked in a hospital that has a union to which I did not belong because I was a travel nurse.  I'll talk about my reasons in another post.

My main concern here is that I wonder if I will feel pressured to join or will be ostracized as a new person for not joining the union.  I've already done a week of orientation and really want to get in the CVICU and see what it's like.  I thought about pulling the plug, as my husband says, but feel obligated to at least give it a try after the hospital has invested the cost of the classroom orientation in me.

The presentation by the union representatives was disappointing.  They gave historical information to the nurses, a couple of who have very little nursing experience, that was incorrect.  I didn't say anything, but I felt very uncomfortable with what was said.

How will this work out?  Time will tell.

Unleash The Nurses

A few days ago there was an article on Medscape about the political efforts of Terri Mills, a nurse working hard to get a bill passed that would place a nurse at the same level of the Surgeon General for the United States, a nurse who would work with the Surgeon General on national health care issues.

"Unleash The Nurses" is one of the headings and you can read the entire article here.

This is one of my absolute favorite quotes from the article, as stated by Susan Hassmiller of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation:

"People are looking for solutions for how to deliver better patient care, how to be better providers, what do better systems look like. To not have a nurse at all high-ranking decision-making tables—something's wrong with that picture. You would never make legal decisions without having a lawyer involved, so to make decisions about patient and population care, and not have a nurse at the table is ludicrous."

Amen to that.

*photo courtesy of Yahoo.com images.

A First For Me...

Let me start by saying this is NOT a political statement.  Please don't freak out.

When I came out of Target last Friday (yes, Black Friday, I admit that I went to Target at 6:00 a.m. - nobody there, by the way, had the place to myself) I looked at the car parked next to mine and saw this bumper sticker.  This was a first for me - I NEVER see nurses with political bumper stickers.  Apologies for the poor photo, people get weird when they see other people taking pictures of their cars so I was trying to be unobtrusive when taking it. 

Nurses have a long history of staying out of politics.  Did you know that even though nursing was a predominantly women's profession in the 1800's (that's an understatement, it was basically ALL a women's profession in the 1800's), nursing refused to get involved in pushing for the women's right to vote?  Yes, a few notable nurses spoke out, but as a group, nursing didn't even take an official stand on the issue.  Unbelievable!

I applaud this nurse for putting it out there, for taking a stand, for making it public - and not just too his/her Facebook friends!