Raising demands for transparency and better patient care, Nationwide nurses rally for change
Nurses and nurse practitioners at Nationwide Children’s Hospital recently rallied in Columbus as they fight to form their union and have a voice in their working conditions and hospital policies that affect patients.
“We are nurses. We are nurse practitioners. We are here day and night, working long hours, overtime, holidays, weekends. We are here to give our patients the best care,” said Abby Groseclose, a nurse at the hospital. “We deserve the safety and the staffing to do our jobs right....Only through unions has nursing transformed from dangerous and unregulated to an organized, educated profession. We have unions to thank for our progress, and as a union, we can keep nursing a safe career.”
The nurses and nurse practitioners gathered with members of the community, including several elected officials and local labor partners who support the workers in their fight for a seat at the table. Safety, protecting high-quality patient care, and ensuring that the hospital is accountable to front line staff were top of mind in their remarks.
“Unionization is not a battle, and it's not a threat. It is a pathway to partnership, to accountability and shared responsibility,” said Josey Hensley, who has been a nurse at Nationwide Children’s Hospital for almost 20 years. “While our hospital speaks of shared governance and that they value the nursing voice, there's a significant disconnect between those stated mechanisms and the lived experiences of bedside staff. Collective bargaining allows a voting majority of nurses to bridge that gap, transforming the concept of voice into a meaningful seat at the table where decisions about patient care and our professional environment are actually made.”
Retired NICU nurse Marian Ruff and one of the original nurses fighting to organize their union spoke at the rally, coming out to support the working nurses and nurse practitioners. “A union would give us a collective voice,” said Ruff. “It would allow us to sit across the table from management and to negotiate the benefits for everything that we do.”
As dedicated healthcare professionals, the nurses emphasized that this fight is focused on what matters most: improving patient care.
“With the union contract, we would be able to guarantee more for us, as well as improving things for patients like staff ratios,” said Phil Streza, who has been a nurse for over eight years and has experience working at an already unionized hospital in the area. “I think that if we were to incorporate that same type of unionization tactic here and advocate for not only ourselves but also our patients, we would elevate the care that we give and increase tenure.”
Currently, the nurses and nurse practitioners are continuing their drive to unionize and working to hold hospital management accountable for lack of transparency and discrepancies in policies that impact patient care and staff retention. Sign the NCH Nurses Union Wall of Support here to show your support now!