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HCA Healthcare is an American for-profit operator of health care facilities that was founded in 1968. It is based in Nashville, Tennessee, and, as of May 2020, owns and operates 186 hospitals and approximately 2,000 sites of care, including surgery centers, freestanding emergency rooms, urgent care centers and physician clinics in 21 states and the United Kingdom. As of 2021, HCA Healthcare is ranked #62 on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
Nursing in the United Kingdom has a long history. The current form of nursing is often considered as beginning with Florence Nightingale who pioneered modern nursing. Nightingale initiated formal schools of nursing in the United Kingdom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The role and perception of nursing has dramatically changed from that of a handmaiden to the doctor to professionals in their own right. There are over 500,000 nurses in the United Kingdom and they work in a variety of settings, such as hospitals, health centres, nursing homes, hospices, communities, and academia, with most working for the National Health Service (NHS). Nurses work across all demographics and requirements of the public: adults, children, mental health, and learning disability. Nurses work in a range of specialties from the broad areas of medicine, surgery, theatres, and investigative sciences such as imaging. Nurses also work in large areas of sub-specialities such as respiratory, diabetes, neurology, infectious diseases, liver, research, cardiac, and stoma. Nurses often work in multi-disciplinary teams but increasingly are found working independently.
A nursing shortage occurs when the demand for nursing professionals, such as Registered Nurses (RNs), exceeds the supply locally—within a health care facility—nationally or globally. It can be measured, for instance, when the nurse-to-patient ratio, the nurse-to-population ratio, the number of job openings necessitates a higher number of nurses than currently available, or the current number of nurses is above a certain age where retirement becomes an option and plays a factor in staffing making the work force in a higher need of nurses. The nursing shortage is global according to 2022 World Health Organization fact sheet.
The Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) is a labor union in Pennsylvania that represents about 8,300 nurses and allied health professionals.
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), an affiliate of National Nurses United, is a trade union labor union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States. Since 2018, CNA/NNOC has been led by Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, RN.
The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the "NHS" name. Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland was created separately and is often locally referred to as "the NHS". The four systems were established in 1948 as part of major social reforms following the Second World War. The founding principles were that services should be comprehensive, universal and free at the point of delivery—a health service based on clinical need, not ability to pay. Each service provides a comprehensive range of health services, free at the point of use for people ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom apart from dental treatment and optical care. In England, NHS patients have to pay prescription charges; some, such as those aged over 60 and certain state benefit recipients, are exempt.
Nursing is a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life. Nurses may be differentiated from other health care providers by their approach to patient care, training, and scope of practice. Nurses practice in many specialties with differing levels of prescription authority. Nurses comprise the largest component of most healthcare environments; but there is evidence of international shortages of qualified nurses. Nurses collaborate with other healthcare providers such as physicians, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, and psychologists. Unlike nurse practitioners, nurses typically can not prescribe medications in the US. Nurse practitioners are nurses with a graduate degree in advanced practice nursing. They practice independently in a variety of settings in more than half of the United States. Since the postwar period, nurse education has undergone a process of diversification towards advanced and specialized credentials, and many of the traditional regulations and provider roles are changing.
Abbott Northwestern Hospital is a 686-staffed bed teaching and specialty hospital based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a part of the Allina Health network of hospitals and clinics.
National Nurses United (NNU) is the largest organization of registered nurses in the United States. With more than 225,000 members, it is the farthest-reaching union and professional association of registered nurses in the U.S. Founded in 2009 through the merging of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, the United American Nurses, and the Massachusetts Nurses Association, the NNU focuses on amplifying the voice of direct care RNs and patients in national policy. The union's policy positions include the enactment of safe nurse-to-patient ratios, patient advocacy rights at the Executive and State level, and legislation for single-payer health care to secure "quality healthcare for all, as a human right." The organization's goal is to "organize all direct care RNs into a single organization capable of exercising influence over the healthcare industry, governments, and employers."
The SEIU Healthcare 1199NW strike of 2014 was a 24-hour strike called by the Service Employees Union healthcare Local 1199NW. The strike was begun on Tuesday, November 18, 2014 at 7:00 A.M. There were 1,100 workers at two Pierce County hospital operated by CHI Franciscan Health in Tacoma participated in the strike event. The two hospitals are St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma and St. Clare Hospital in Lakewood. Nurse assistants, licensed practical nurses, unit secretaries, dietary workers, housekeepers, sterile processors, technical workers and other services of the two hospitals were walked off the job to participate in the strike. The strike did not include nurses and doctors. The union members were demanding CHI Franciscan Health to improve wages, improve on health care, improve on their charity care policy, and end unfair labor practices.
Shortages related to the COVID-19 pandemic are pandemic-related disruptions to goods production and distribution, insufficient inventories, and disruptions to workplaces caused by infections and public policy.
The NHS Nightingale Hospital London was the first of the NHS Nightingale Hospitals, temporary hospitals set up by NHS England for the COVID-19 pandemic. It was housed in the ExCeL London convention centre in East London. The hospital was rapidly planned and constructed, being formally opened on 3 April and receiving its first patients on 7 April 2020. It served 54 patients during the first wave of the pandemic, and was used to serve non-COVID patients and provide vaccinations during the second wave. It was closed in April 2021.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted hospitals around the world. Many hospitals have scaled back or postponed non-emergency care. This has medical consequences for the people served by the hospitals, and it has financial consequences for the hospitals. Health and social systems across the globe are struggling to cope. The situation is especially challenging in humanitarian, fragile and low-income country contexts, where health and social systems are already weak. Health facilities in many places are closing or limiting services. Services to provide sexual and reproductive health care risk being sidelined, which will lead to higher maternal mortality and morbidity. The pandemic also resulted in the imposition of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in places such as California and New York for all public workers, including hospital staff.
The 2020 University of Illinois Hospital strikes were the result of a breakdown in contract negotiations between labor unions and hospital management over salaries, staffing levels, and access to personal protective equipment.
The 2021–22 Saint Vincent Hospital strike was a labor strike involving nurses at the Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. The strike began on March 8, 2021, following disputes between the Massachusetts Nurses Association, which represents about 800 nurses at the hospital, and the hospital regarding staffing levels, and ended on January 3, 2022, after the nurses ratified an agreement with the hospital.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hospitals became severe for some hospital systems of the United States in the spring of 2020, a few months after the COVID-19 pandemic began. Some had started to run out of beds, along with having shortages of nurses and doctors. By November 2020, with 13 million cases so far, hospitals throughout the country had been overwhelmed with record numbers of COVID-19 patients. Nursing students had to fill in on an emergency basis, and field hospitals were set up to handle the overflow.
The 2021 Mercy Hospital strike was a labor strike involving nurses and hospital workers at Mercy Hospital of Buffalo, in the United States. The strike began on October 1, 2021, and ended on November 4, 2021. It began following breakdown in collective bargaining negotiations between Communications Workers of America (CWA), the union representing the workers, and the Catholic Health System.
The Alliance of Health Care Unions (Alliance) is a union federation of 21 local unions representing roughly 52,000 Kaiser Permanente (KP) employees. The Alliance is one of two union federations that are part of the largest and longest running Labor Management Partnership in the U.S. In 2021, more than 40,000 Alliance members were on the verge of the largest open-ended healthcare strike over concerns of short staffing and a two-tier wage system proposed by KP. On November 13, 2021, the Alliance and KP reached an agreement that preserved leading wages and benefits and defeated the two-tier system.
Since May–June 2022, a series of labour strikes and industrial disputes have occurred in various industries of the United Kingdom's economy as workers walked out over pay and conditions. The strikes took place with rising inflation, and demands for pay increases that would keep pace with this inflation.
There has been a nursing shortage in Canada for decades. This became more acute in the period between 1943 and 1952 as Canada's health services were expanding, and the number of hospital beds increased along with the number of hospitalizations. By the mid-1940s across Canada the shortage, estimated at 8,700, led to a re-organization and re-conceptualization of nursing in Canada, according to a 2020 journal article in BC Studies. The nature of nursing was changing with new and time-consuming responsibilities, such as the administration of penicillin. During that period, there was no unemployment for nurses, especially if they were willing to be mobile. However, working conditions for nurses were very poor, with low wages combined with long hours; nursing force retention was challenging. As well, since almost all nurses were women, they had responsibilities at home they had to manage. In response to the shortage of nurses, women who had trained as registered nurses (RNs) but had left the workforce when they married, were encouraged to return to work; volunteers were engaged; nursing courses were accelerated; and new categories of regulated nursing were added to registered nursing—"practical nurses" and "nursing assistants." At that time, a "utopia of nursing" referred to teams of nursing staff which included registered nurses and other regulated nursing and hospital worker support personnel. Some of these auxiliary positions were also open to First Nations women and other racialized groups.
References
- ↑ "One-day strike by Minnesota nurses to defend patient care". WSWS.org. 2010-06-11. Retrieved 2013-09-23.
- ↑ Broaddus, Chris Isidore,Adrienne (2022-09-12). "Massive health care strike: 15,000 Minnesota nurses walk off the job | CNN Business". CNN. Retrieved 2022-09-14.
- ↑ "Largest private-sector nurses strike in U.S. history begins in Minnesota". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286 . Retrieved 2022-09-14.
- ↑ Muller, Madison; Ceron, Ella (2022-09-12). "Thousands of Nurses Strike in Minnesota Over Staff Shortages". Bloomberg. Retrieved 2022-09-13.
- ↑ "15,000 nurses just walked out of work. Here's what you need to know about one of the profession's largest strikes in history". Fortune. Retrieved 2022-09-14.
- ↑ "Thousands of Minnesota nurses launch 3-day strike over pay". ca.finance.yahoo.com. Retrieved 2022-09-14.
