I have a lot of readers. I need your help. I want you to take this blog post and tweet it, copy it, facebook it, refer to it on your blog.Here's the thing: Vanderbilt University Medical Center has started requiring its nurses to do janitorial work. After a local TV (Eyewitness News 3 in Nashville) learned of this they interviewed an administrator who said:
"Cleaning the room after the case, including pulling your trash and mopping the floor, are all infection-prevention strategies. And it's all nursing, and it's all surgical tech. You may not believe that, but even Florence Nightingale knew that was true," said a hospital administrator to staff in a video obtained by the Channel 4 I-Team. One manager said in an email: We have undergone some major budgetary changes ... this means we will need to pull together like never before."
If this sounds like it is just in the OR, alas, no it isn't. Its all patient rooms.
According to another site (care2 make a difference), Vanderbilt is:
"in the midst of defending itself against lawsuits claiming that they have fired employees in violation of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA)". Also: "The hospital is also in court over accusations that it has been engaging in Medicare fraud for over a decade". Could this be why a couple thousand employees have been laid off?
Anyway here's the topper to all of this, a nurse administrator told the nurses:
"refrain from speaking negatively about this in an open forum where our customer can hear. If you need to vent come see me."
Well if the nurses at Vanderbilt can't speak about this we will, all over the country...
