Workers’ Correspondence
A registered nurse responds to Washington state correspondent Chris Lindberg’s report on a class action suit by nurses charging hospitals with conspiring to hold down their wages.
I want to thank you for your article on nursing and the class action suit. I am a frustrated RN supervisor and I am fed up with the way patients and nurses are being treated due to CEO and CFO’s wanting more money in their own pockets.
The nursing shortage is because of the way we are treated. We are denied our vacations and heaven forbid if our child gets sick and we can’t come to work. We watch our patients not get the care they need because we can’t be in two places at once. We not only do our work but also the Dr’s.
The industry has cut us to the bare minimum. There are nurses out there who are available to work on an as-needed basis and agency nursing, but our bosses won’t let us use them. The losers are the patients.
Whatever happened to morals and ethics and taking care of people? I don’t think that the common person has any idea the way hospitals are run and how people die because of it and how nurses get burned out.
When nurses are run so short-staffed — that is how mistakes happen. We are normal human beings, not God. But when we get sued for our mistakes because of understaffing that could have been prevented, the hospital denies it and leaves the nurse hanging. There are many of us that are just too scared to work or are afraid of losing our livelihood.
Please if you could, get this information out to the general public. Thank you. Please do not use my name on anything. I am afraid, as many nurses are, of being blackballed for speaking out about the conditions that we work under every day trying to save lives.
—M.C., RN, BSN
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