WING USA Call to Action June 20, 2010

Letter Campaign to ANA: Create Fund for Work-Disabled Nurses

Nurses in US hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and home health agencies are still being injured at epidemic rates. Hospitals report more injuries and illnesses than any other industry in the nation with one in ten healthcare workers reported to experience a time lost injury every year. Registered nurses and nurse aides remain in the top ten for work-related musculoskeletal injuries. Some experience total or partial disability and loss of job when employers refuse to retain their work-injured nurses, particularly if they cannot continue lifting patients.

Many of the disabling injuries to nurses are to the back, neck, or shoulder, most caused by being required to manually lift and move patients, an unsafe nursing practice which I call “forced hazardous lifting,” estimated at 1.8 tons per 8-hour shift. Thousands of these work-disabled nurses must then engage an indifferent (anti)workers’ compensation system or disability system which leaves them living beneath the poverty line. The physical disability and financial hardship caused by employers terminating work-disabled nurses sometimes lead to loss of possessions and home, disruption of family life and divorce, social isolation, chronic pain, anxiety, and overwhelming depression. (For dozens of stories and hundreds of feedback comments by back-injured nurses and others see http://www.wingusa.org/story1.htm and http://www.wingusa.org/book_feedback.htm.)

A fund needs to be created to assist nurses injured and disabled by caring for others. The American Nurses Association is the nation's largest nursing organization representing the interests of the nation's 3.1 million registered nurses. ANA has the power, size, and structure to provide and administer a fund for work-disabled nurses. With nearly 180,000 dues paying members, if ANA raised dues by only $10 per year (a very small amount) it would provide a fund of nearly $1.8 million which could be distributed to work-disabled nurses.

Take this letter, email it from your personal computer to Marla Weston, PhD, RN, ANA Chief Executive Officer, at marla.weston@ana.org, and to Nancy Hughes, RN, MHA, Director, ANA Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, at Nancy.Hughes@ana.org. Or, mail your letter to ANA, 8515 Georgia Avenue, Suite 400, Silver Spring, MD 20910-3492. Or, fax your letter to ANA at fax 301-628-5348. Ask ANA to set up this fund by surveying their membership to decide if the fund is acceptable, and if over 50% agree, then the fund would be established by the $10 raise in dues per year.

In the book Back Injuries Among Healthcare Workers: Causes, Solutions, and Impacts (Charney and Hudson, CRC Press), many injured nurses and nurse assistants describe their individual post-injury plight of pain, poverty, and depression. All royalties from the book go to work-injured nurses, nurse assistants, and other healthcare workers as an effort to help in the face of staggering needs.

The only national charitable foundation dedicated to financially helping registered nurses in need is called “Nurses House, A National Fund for Nurses in Need” at http://www.nurseshouse.org/. Nurses House says that although grants totaling almost $300,000 helped nearly 300 nurses over the past three years, “We can’t keep pace with the ever-increasing demand.” A potential ANA fund of $1.8 million per year would be $5.4 million in three years, eighteen times greater than what Nurses House can provide to RNs in need.

There seems to be no organization dedicated to financially helping injured/disabled LPNs, nurse assistants, and other healthcare workers. This same model, of a fund financed by a small annual increase in dues, could be taken to the respective national organizations of LPNs, nurse assistants, and other healthcare workers to assist their work-disabled members in need.

Nursing is known as the “most caring profession.” ANA’s website states that ANA “defines the code of ethics for the nursing profession” and “keeps the interests of nurses in the forefront.” Shouldn’t ANA translate “nurses caring for nurses” into specific assistance for nurses disabled by working as a nurse? Ten dollars a year could translate into REAL help for work-injured and disabled nurses.

Please help in two ways:

1. Send a letter to ANA immediately asking ANA to establish a fund to assist work-injured/disabled nurses. (Email, mail, and fax addresses above.)

2. Forward this request to others, including email lists and organizations, asking them to join the letter-writing campaign asking ANA to establish a fund for nurses disabled by working as a nurse in the service of others.

With best wishes to each of you,

Anne Hudson, RN, BSN
June 20, 2010
Founder, Work Injured Nurses’ Group USA (WING USA)
Coos Bay, Oregon
anne@wingusa.org