Nurses and Essaibi George, who has partnered with the MNA on her mayoral candidacy’s public health platform, will discuss the experiences of nurses over the past year and legislative solutions nurses have proposed to fix to longstanding healthcare system problems
BOSTON, Mass. – As part of National Nurses Week, nurses and healthcare professionals with the Massachusetts Nurses Association will join with Boston City Councilor and Mayoral Candidate Annissa Essaibi George for an event on May 11 that will highlight the daunting challenges healthcare workers have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and legislative solutions nurses have proposed.
National Nurses Week Boston City Hall Event
Date: Tuesday, May 11
Time: 1 p.m.
Location: On the plaza outside Boston City Hall.
Details: Attendees will don masks and maintain responsible social distances. Speakers will include nurses and Annissa Essaibi George, who the MNA endorsed for Boston Mayor because of her strong public health leadership and ongoing support of frontline nurses and healthcare professionals.
To mark National Nurses Week, MNA nurses and healthcare professionals released “The State of Nursing in Massachusetts,” a survey of more than 500 registered nurses showing that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated troubling healthcare trends such as unsafe patient assignments, diminished time with patients, and a lack of workplace safety. Email jmarkman@mnarn.org for the full survey results and charts.
“This National Nurses Week, what nurses really want is not pizza or flowers or accolades,” said Katie Murphy, a practicing ICU nurse and president of the MNA. “We would like to celebrate National Nurses Week with safe staffing, with workplace violence prevention, with occupational presumption, with the protection of essential services. Let’s celebrate National Nurses Week with real action on the issues affecting patients and nurses at the bedside.”
"Our healthcare system is broken and was not able to sufficiently respond to the needs of the COVID-19 crisis," said Essaibi George. "And when we needed them most, our nurses stepped up. Selfless, they put the health and safety of themselves and their families on the line each and every day. It's time we get our priorities straight and implement changes that provide our nurses a safe, quality work environment to deliver safe, quality care to their patients."
Since her first days on the Boston City Council, Annissa has fought to place at least one full-time nurse and one full-time social-emotional support specialist in every public school. She has also led the Council’s response to the opioid epidemic, the homelessness crisis, and insufficient mental health care in Boston. Annissa has fiercely advocated for increasing the number of safe collection sites for sharps across the City of Boston, expanding access to mental health resources, challenging the stigma of addiction, rebuilding the Long Island Bridge, and creating a recovery campus, and ensuring mental health clinicians become a part of each Boston Police Department precinct.
National Nurses Week begins each year on May 6 and ends on May 12, Florence Nightingale's birthday. For 19 years, nurses have topped Gallup’s ranking of the most trusted professions. They have been called “healthcare heroes” throughout the pandemic, but during National Nurses Week are seeking important, lasting changes to the Massachusetts healthcare system that properly protect and support patient safety, nurses, and other staff.
“The State of Nursing in Massachusetts” is a randomized survey of Massachusetts RNs conducted March 25 to March 30 by Boston-based Beacon Research. Nurses from all types of healthcare settings were involved in the survey, including teaching hospitals, community hospitals, non-hospital settings and non-direct patient care. A plurality of nurses who responded (45%) worked in hospitals and most (58%) were not MNA members.
The survey results demonstrate strong support among nurses for addressing issues that MNA nurses and healthcare professionals have proposed tackling through state legislation proposed during the 2021-2022 term, including presumption of workplace COVID-19 infection, personal protective equipment (PPE) data transparency, workplace violence prevention, independent studies of the nursing workforce, essential services protections, and a measure to relieve emergency department overcrowding by behavioral health patients. Read more: www.massnurses.org/RNSurvey2021.
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Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.
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