nursewords

I’m a CRNA in NC. Nurses are trying to unionize here, which I support. But our hospital is trying to include advanced practice nurses into the union vote, because we’ll all likely vote no, because the union isn’t really for us.

How do you handle advanced practice nurses with your union?

That’s what we’ve been saying! But because we have an RN license, they are trying to include us. My gut says it’s about trying to dilute the yes to union vote. There’s a hearing soon that will make the final determination. We don’t want this to put a divide between us and the nurses. We want them to be able to unionize if that’s what they want, but if we’re included, we can’t vote yes because it would be against our best interests.

No, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that a nurses’ union is not the right place for us, because our job is so different and separate. In some ways, we are handled like nurses and in others we are handled like doctors. In my hospital, we are under the physician management group.

That’s crazy! And exactly the scenario we are worried about!

Well the vote is coming up, and that definitely is not in place. So it would be a big risk to assume the union would look out for us at all, let alone equally to RNs.

There are a lot of conflicts of interests they would have to resolve. What may be good for an RN might be bad for the CRNAs and vice versa.

Also, the hospital does not treat us like RNs. I think they are using the fact that we have an RN license to include us, because that would be more NO votes against the union. We don’t want to be included.