Labor & Employment Law

Temple Nurses Won?t be Silenced

By Mike Hall

Tomorrow, 1,000 RNs and 500 health care workers at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia are set to go on strike. The members of Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) have been without a contract since September.

One major issue, according to PASNAP, is hospital management’s effort to include a “gag order” provision preventing the nurses and health care workers from speaking out about patient care in public. PASNAP President Patricia Eakin, a Temple emergency room nurse says:

I’ve been at Temple for almost 27 years, I’ve bargained a lot of the contracts, and I’m simply flabbergasted. I’m astonished that among the many terrible things they are trying to put in the contract, they are trying to insert this terrible gag clause that prevents us from saying anything to the public.

PASNAP is a National Nurse United (NNU) affiliate and at March 26 rally, NNU Vice President Jean Ross told the Temple workers “it is outrageous that the hospital has proposed a ?gag order’ to silence the nurses and healthcare professionals.”

A core responsibility of a nurse is to advocate for her patient, both at the bedside and in the public arena. No nurse could accept the loss of this vital responsibility, and we are happy to stand by Temple nurses to defend against any threats to the profession and patient care.

A post on DailyKos under the byline National Nurses Movement says management’s moves to prevent nurses and other health care professionals from speaking out about problems in patient care at their facilities is not limited to TUH.   

Temple’s not the first hospital to hope to make its troublesome, formidable nurse corps just shuts up.

Last summer, 200 or RNs at University of California, San Francisco marched and protested when one of their nurse colleagues was fired for protesting an unsafe response to Swine Flu. Last autumn, every nurse in America watched horrified as two Texas nurses were prosecuted by a County sheriff for reporting wildly unsafe actions by a doctor buddy.  Texas nurses have been pushing a law to protect whistle-blowers ever since…Nurses and healthcare professionals need to be able to stand up for their patients, even if it causes criticism of the hospital. They are independent professionals.  

Click here to read the entire post and here for the latest on the situation at TUH. You can send Temple a message here. Follow the Temple workers on Twitter and Facebook.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on March 30, 2010 (boomark / email).