An investigative report in the Sept. 10 Chicago Tribune revealing that "overwhelmed and inadequately trained nurses kill and injure thousands of patients every year" points to the growing scandal of chronic understaffing in the nation's hospitals and is a "clarion call for nurses to organize, mobilize and unionize to fight back to save our patients and save our profession," says the FNHP.

The Tribune series, which analyzed 3 million state and federal computer records, charged that hospitals in Chicago and nationally "are quietly eliminating or supplanting the role of their best-trained, highest-paid nurses, creating a harried work environment that often compromises patients." The Tribune report was featured by all the major television networks and in the print media.

The tragedies "detailed in the investigative series and the hundreds more that happen every day will continue until nurses across the country... get angry enough to take to the streets and take control of their profession," wrote Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals leader and AFT vice president Candice Owley in a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune on Sept. 15. Owley said nurses should have the power to decide appropriate staffing levels, to leave when they have had to work too many hours to ensure patient safety, and to refuse to perform tasks for which they haven't been adequately trained. Nurses should also have whistleblower protection so they can expose quality problems without fear of retribution, she noted.