**Please read and feel free to share this post** As a citizen of Central Pennsylvania for the past 55 years, I like many of you have a vested interest in the well being of our community. This is where I was born, graduated from high school, worked as a musician and construction laborer, was married, raised a family, graduated from Nursing school, and was employed as a Registered Nurse for eleven years. All of that before being diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease at 41, spending ten years as a process consultant to hundreds of Hospitals across the United States, and now at 55 am Living The Dream and trying to make ends meet from my home in Blair County. As information is released and reported on regarding the current labor dispute between Hospital management and Nurses, all of us have the right to form our own opinions on what the issues actually are. With that, I am exercising my right and voicing my opinion by speaking out in favor of the people who I have personally stood beside while working to help patients survive another day or at least be the best they can be today. And while it is true that many Nurses are able to make payments on a home and raise families in our community, money is certainly not their driving force. Nurses I know are like any of us waiting on the next pay check and hoping to pay bills on time. It saddens me greatly that our Registered Nurses, are now being forced to put their careers and source of income on the line for the safety and well being of all of us living in this community. I know these people. The number one issue for the Nurses has to do with workload, or nurse to patient ratios. There is a limit on how much any of us can do and do correctly. When I was a young man digging ditches, my bosses always knew how much they could expect me to accomplish in a shift and respected that. A simple analogy perhaps, but it is the same thing for Nurses. Asking them to assume responsibility for more patients than they can safely manage is not only unreasonable, it is unsafe and unacceptable. We are not talking about another shovel full of dirt here, we are talking about human lives. I was always under the assumption that standards of care such as workload could be safely managed by private business. But based on my experience from years as a consultant in the health care field, and the word of our local Nurses, they are not. And that friends is the point of my message. I can understand workers and management being at odds over how the financial pie is cut, but work conditions; especially patient safety should not fall on the shoulders of our Nurses to bear. That is why I am in favor of letting Nurses do their job, and asking our legal system to set and police realistic standards for patient safety and Nurse -to - patient ratio. The link below describes bills that were introduced into the Pennsylvania House and Senate by Rep. Phyllis Mundy and State Sen. Daylin Leach. I urge each of you to review the proposed legislation and notify your representatives that we do not want our Nurses to have to risk their professional licences and source of income to protect our safety. Thank you, Perry Conrad
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 15:47:01 +0000
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