Cristine Lacerna

SACRAMENTO — Filipino nurses may find themselves at the forefront of the battle being waged by the California Nurses Association (CNA) against Governor Schwarzenegger over patient-staffing ratio law.

That battle escalated last December 21 when the CNA filed a lawsuit at the Sacramento Superior Court, citing the governor and the California Department of Health Services for suspending nurse-to-patient staffing ratio requirements in med-surgical units and emergency rooms in California hospitals as mandated by a state law signed in 1999.

The emergency regulation, announced in November, provoked severe criticisms not only from nursing labor organizations like the CNA, but also from various consumer interest groups as well as a few legislators.

“There are many Filipino registered nurses who comprise mostly the majority of the hospitals represented by CNA,” Susette Nacorda, a registered nurse based at the Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles. She represents the hospital in CNA.

Eric Macatuno, also an RN and an organizer for CNA, asserted the importance of mobilizing Filipino nurses.

“[In] almost every hospital in California there are Filipinos working.

Many Filipino RNs work at the medical-surgical units and this emergency will directly affect them,” he opined.

Macatuno also emphasize the role of CNA in improving the working conditions for many Filipino nurses through “great contracts and benefits with pay steps that eliminate pay disparities among RNs.” He and his colleagues hope that many Filipino nurses would realize the potential impact of their sheer number in the fight to protect the nurse-to-patient staffing ratios.

CNA is counting on the support of many nurses as well as the court to prevail upon the governor to rollback the emergency regulation. CNA maintains that the governor’s move to suspend the reduction of nurse-patient ratio in med-surgical units from six to five patients per nurse – which would have started last Jan. 1, 2005 – is illegal and counterintuitive for patients’ safety.

According to Macatuno, the CNA views this “attack to the patient ratio as a political payback by the governor to the hospital industry.” “One does not change the law just because one knows one has the power to do so.

The intent of the law is clear and must not be manipulated just because one is pressured by the hospital industry that has given so much money to the governor,” he said.

CNA is hoping for a big turnout at a protest rally it is organizing to coincide with the DHS hearing scheduled for January 18 on proposed changes to the law.

Source:  Philippine News Online