Incident reporting is a powerful source of information. When used effectively, it provides a factual description of an adverse event or near miss that supports learning, safety and improved care quality. Most health care entities utilize an electronic incident reporting system to identify opportunities for improvement.
What is incrementalism? Merriam-Webster defines it as a policy or advocacy of a policy of political or social change by degrees: gradualism. Why do we as nurses need to be aware of incrementalism? Because it’s a double-edged sword and it can cut deep.
Minnesota nurses, 4 years after passing a comprehensive workplace violence law and 3 years after obtaining security guards in the ED, are on the picket lines at Children’s, United, Methodist, North Memorial, Healtheast, Fairview, and Abbott-Northwestern hospitals. They’re asking their employers for paid time off after incidents of violence occur, and before workers compensation coverage kicks in.
As a general matter, the law does not afford employees the right to walk off the job because of unsafe conditions in the workplace. However, a situation may arise in which a nurse is confronted with an immediate choice between not performing an assignment or being subjected to a real risk of serious injury or death arising from a hazardous workplace condition.
Each employer has a duty to provide a workplace that is free of known dangers that may harm employees. Like all workers, you have the right to working conditions that are free of known health and safety hazards.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee has proclaimed May 6-12 Nurses Week in our state! The theme for this year’s National Nurses Week is 4 Million Reasons to Celebrate—a nod to nurses’ sheer numbers. Here in Washington state, we have more than 100,000 reasons to celebrate!
The latest report on the Rest Break settlement with St. Joseph Medical Center - Tacoma
Press release
The state Department of Labor and Industries on April 11 cited and fined St. Joseph Medical Center Tacoma for safety violations related to a series of attacks on nurses at the hospital. L&I’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health launched an investigation at the request of WSNA after a patient in the psychiatric unit assaulted numerous nurses in October 2018.
As nurses around the country watch to see if Washington’s legislature will pass urgently needed breaks and overtime protections, we are reminded of the power nurses have owning our profession.
In perhaps one of the most demeaning statements on the nursing profession since Joy Behar’s 2015 “doctor’s stethoscope” comments on The View, Washington State Senator Maureen Walsh proclaimed on the Senate floor that Critical Access Hospital nurses should be exempt from protections in mandatory overtime because they sit around and play cards most of the day.
Margarita López Prentice, former state legislator, longtime WSNA member and inductee in the Washington State Nurses Hall of Fame, passed away quietly in her sleep of natural causes at her home in Bryn Mawr-Skyway, Washington on April 2, 2019. She was 88 years old.
It’s a situation most nurses can relate to. You’re standing up for your patients, your license, your job – and you’re overruled by a physician. An administrator. A pharmacist. What do you do?
On Tuesday, the Senate released its budget.
As part of the Nursing Now three-year global campaign to improve health by raising the profile and status of nursing worldwide, Nursing Now USA will be launched on April 9, 2019 at the National Press Club with live streaming of the event.
The week started off with a flurry of activity as the House of Representatives released its biennial budget on Monday.
Our bills continue to move through the legislative process – and this week one of those bills was highlighted on TVW’s Legislative Review.
It would seem self-evident that nursing professors are important, especially in the day and age of looming nursing shortages. Yet, in our state, nearly every community and technical college with a nursing program has faculty vacancies.
We are officially halfway through the 2019 legislative session!
Active in professional nursing activities and associations throughout her career, Betty served on the Washington State Board of Nursing, the Board of Directors of the Washington State Nurses Association, and the Inland Empire Nurses Association. In 1996, Betty was inducted into the Washington State Nurses Hall of Fame.
Building on the work of the landmark report The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, an ad hoc committee will extend the vision for the nursing profession into 2030. Attend March 20, 2019 Public Session for the Committee on the Future of Nursing 2020-2030 in person or online.
It is irrefutable that when nurses do not get their breaks, patient care suffers. If you think nurses receiving the rest breaks they are entitled to is important to patient care, please: take action and send a note to your senator.
WSNA recognizes the need to provide nursing care across state lines; however, we have a number of concerns about the Nurse Licensure Compact as currently written.
On Thursday, nurses from around the state converged in Olympia for WSNA Lobby Day.
Today is the first cutoff of the legislative session – meaning all policy bills must be voted out of the policy committee in their house of origin to keep moving through the process.