Minnesota Nurses May Strike; Group Advocates More Health Jobs For Deaf
News outlets report on changes in the medical profession.
Star Tribune: Nurses in Minnesota are running "headlong into wrenching changes in the hospital industry," and are on the verge of a major strike. "Fourteen Twin Cities hospitals and their 12,000 nurses are locked in the most contentious bargaining in a quarter century. Nurses will vote this week whether to authorize a strike, which could begin as soon as June 1. ... The nurses say the hospitals want to cut health and pension benefits they've fought years to secure and to change work rules in ways that will endanger patients. The hospitals say they're responding to economic realities -- a tough recession and looming health reform -- and patient care will not suffer" (Yee, 5/19).
Meanwhile, "[t]he health care industry offers few high-paying job opportunities for the deaf, but that could change in the next few years," Gannett/Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports. "Expanding health care career opportunities for the deaf and hard-of-hearing will be the mission of a group of higher education experts from the National Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of Rochester and Gallaudet University in Washington" (Tumulty, 5/20).