Thanks Rebecca Patton, ANA President

I had the blessing of visiting family in Ohio last weekend. Attending church and Sunday School with mom. I had no idea that Rebecca Patton, President of the American Nurses Association, was one of Lakewood United Methodist Church's own, much less that she would be teaching mom's class that I attended with her. What an opportunity to hear this articulate spokeswomen for nurses and the nursing profession!

Stuff I learned:

• in the typical, average 8 hour shift, the nurse will push, pull, lift and move about 1.8 TONS of weight
• it follows that many nurses drop out of the profession due to back injury
• visits to the nurse practitioner will be as common- or more- as visits to the doctor
  
• generally, nurses aren't in it for the money -less stressful jobs for comparable pay can be found
• nursing school is not cheap and loans and scholarships are not easy to find either
  
• understaffed nursing departments are a result of profit seeking, decided by business, not health care people, and certainly not nurses.
  
• the big insurance players are spending about 1.8 million PER DAY to defeat a not for profit public option plan not run by the private insurers
• like most of us, many have had to stall retirements until their savings recover; the current glut of nurses will not last more than a few years.