Post by Greg Mercer - Amanda Trujillo and Nurse Advocacy
Friends and colleagues,
Nurses have a professional duty to advocate on their patients’ behalf. When our working conditions become sufficiently hostile to this mandate, we each have a simple but intimidating choice: abandon our duty out of fear or convenience, or take our advocacy a step further by publicly taking a stand for Nursing autonomy and ethical health care unfettered by corruption.
Health care is big business in America: 18% of the economy and growing. I am a Psychiatric Nurse, Nurse Educator and advocate. I and many colleagues have become interested in the growing corruption in health care that degrades the integrity and quality of research, administration, regulation, and clinical practice. Given the tremendous wealth and pervasive conflicts of interest in health care today, the notion of hundreds of billions of dollars lost annually to overcharging, waste, corruption, and unneeded interventions comes as no surprise. Experience in clinical practice today corroborates such concerns.
We have also seen a sharp increase in reports of Nurses being abused for professionally mandated efforts to educate and advocate on patients’ behalf, when such efforts inconvenience those more interested in riches than ethical patient care: harassment, firings, defamation and even threats of lost licensure. Nurses are under siege, and we each need to consider where we stand on this important issue. We must each make a choice: stand up for Nurses as ethical professionals, or allow business forces to continue to attack our professional autonomy and ability to provide care.
Many Nurse advocates, bloggers and their audiences have already chosen involvement over apathy and hopeless cynicism. One case in particular has been compelling:We have been advocating for Nurse Amanda Trujillo of Arizona. She has thus been rendered unemployable, reduced to Welfare, a single mother soon to lose her home, all because she put a patient before hospital profits, and made the fact public, inconveniencing state Board of Nursing members who also happen to work for the very hospital corporation - Banner Health - that fired her and filed the complaint to the Board against her. This story has only just begun to cross over into some mainstream media. We plan to continue tireless advocacy in the hope of introducing the next Komen-style social media phenomenon to America, and persuade Arizona to take much-needed steps to address corruption in health care administration and regulation.
At present, Arizona rates a D+ on The Center for Public Integrity grading scale for corruption, with F scores in State Civil Service Management and Ethics Enforcement, 27th among the 50 states overall, and far worse than that in these particular areas.
(See http:// www.stateintegrity.org/ arizona )
For this reason and because of Amanda’s ongoing case, we at present focus our national efforts on Arizona.A loosely organized group, we have published two petitions on Change.org
One calls on Arizona to show substantive improvements in the currently unsafe and hostile working conditions for Nurses.
To read more about this petition - maybe even sign the it! - click here:
http://www.change.org/ petitions/governor-state-of-arizona-address-corrupting-factors-in-the-arizona-board-of-nursing?share_id=qRDrhNqFSw&pe=d2e I can be reached for any further information at gregmercer601@gmail.comAnother petition focuses specifically on Amanda’s case:
http://www.change.org/petitions/arizona-state-board-of-nursing-remove-amanda-trujillo-s-nursing-license-from-under-investigation-status We offer you thanks for your consideration in these matters, and invite you to take a stand between Nurses and patients on one side, and profits at any cost on the other.Greg Mercer, MSN
grchealthcareblog.com
grchealthcare@hotmail.com
Health care is big business in America: 18% of the economy and growing. I am a Psychiatric Nurse, Nurse Educator and advocate. I and many colleagues have become interested in the growing corruption in health care that degrades the integrity and quality of research, administration, regulation, and clinical practice. Given the tremendous wealth and pervasive conflicts of interest in health care today, the notion of hundreds of billions of dollars lost annually to overcharging, waste, corruption, and unneeded interventions comes as no surprise. Experience in clinical practice today corroborates such concerns.
We have also seen a sharp increase in reports of Nurses being abused for professionally mandated efforts to educate and advocate on patients’ behalf, when such efforts inconvenience those more interested in riches than ethical patient care: harassment, firings, defamation and even threats of lost licensure. Nurses are under siege, and we each need to consider where we stand on this important issue. We must each make a choice: stand up for Nurses as ethical professionals, or allow business forces to continue to attack our professional autonomy and ability to provide care.
Many Nurse advocates, bloggers and their audiences have already chosen involvement over apathy and hopeless cynicism. One case in particular has been compelling:We have been advocating for Nurse Amanda Trujillo of Arizona. She has thus been rendered unemployable, reduced to Welfare, a single mother soon to lose her home, all because she put a patient before hospital profits, and made the fact public, inconveniencing state Board of Nursing members who also happen to work for the very hospital corporation - Banner Health - that fired her and filed the complaint to the Board against her. This story has only just begun to cross over into some mainstream media. We plan to continue tireless advocacy in the hope of introducing the next Komen-style social media phenomenon to America, and persuade Arizona to take much-needed steps to address corruption in health care administration and regulation.
At present, Arizona rates a D+ on The Center for Public Integrity grading scale for corruption, with F scores in State Civil Service Management and Ethics Enforcement, 27th among the 50 states overall, and far worse than that in these particular areas.
(See http:// www.stateintegrity.org/ arizona )
For this reason and because of Amanda’s ongoing case, we at present focus our national efforts on Arizona.A loosely organized group, we have published two petitions on Change.org
One calls on Arizona to show substantive improvements in the currently unsafe and hostile working conditions for Nurses.
To read more about this petition - maybe even sign the it! - click here:
http://www.change.org/ petitions/governor-state-of-arizona-address-corrupting-factors-in-the-arizona-board-of-nursing?share_id=qRDrhNqFSw&pe=d2e I can be reached for any further information at gregmercer601@gmail.comAnother petition focuses specifically on Amanda’s case:
http://www.change.org/petitions/arizona-state-board-of-nursing-remove-amanda-trujillo-s-nursing-license-from-under-investigation-status We offer you thanks for your consideration in these matters, and invite you to take a stand between Nurses and patients on one side, and profits at any cost on the other.Greg Mercer, MSN
grchealthcareblog.com
grchealthcare@hotmail.com