Spotlight on WING USA

Published: 23 July 2009

ANNE HUDSON, Founder of Work Injured Nurses' Group USA, gives us some insights into how they do things on the other side of the Atlantic.

Greetings, UK friends and RCN WING Quarterly readers, and thank you for allowing me to tell you a little about myself and Work Injured Nurses' Group USA (WING USA).

I am an RN in Coos Bay, Oregon. In the year 2000, I suffered a severe lumbar spine injury from lifting hospital patients and this eventually required surgery. After limited days of workers' compensation "light duty", my hospital had no other work for me if I could not return to lifting patients so I became one of the "disappearing nurses".

I knew this was a very big problem for nurses so I went to the Internet expecting to find a lot of information when I searched for "back injured nurses", but instead I found nothing! I discovered that "no lifting" was in place in England, Australia and other countries, and was gaining momentum in America, but still, I found no assistance, information, or support here for back-injured nurses themselves.

With the help of friends and a dream of helping injured nurses, I started a website originally called "BIN There -Back Injured Nurses" (which helped put the phrase "back injured nurses" into online search engines!). The name was changed in 2002 to Work Injured Nurses' Group USA (WING USA) and the website set up at: www.wingusa.org , with the name patterned after - and, if I may say so, in sisterhood with - your wonderful organisation, RCN WING.

Looking abroad for inspiration

My first international contacts were Maria Bryson, RCN WING Steward and Safety Representative in the UK, and Elizabeth Langford, Australian Nursing Federation Victoria Branch, and Co-ordinator of Injured Nurses Support Group (INSG) in Melbourne. Inspired by the commitment of my new friends who taught me about the extensive help provided to injured and ill nurses by RCN WING and by the ANF and INSG, I set out to provide, if it was within my power, some measure of support and help to American nurses.

Over 500 people are now on the WING USA list for periodic emails, primarily updates on advances with state and national legislation for safe patient handling. There are nurses, nurse assistants and other health care workers, as well as others in health and safety, occupational health, management, administration, education and so on, representing hospitals, nursing homes, and other facilities and organisations.

A quick tour round the website

The most recent legislative news, posted on the WING USA website, regards the anticipated re-introduction of a national bill for safe patient handling in the US.

On the "Feedback" page (www.wingusa.org/book_feedback.htm) are several hundred comments by injured nurses about the book I co-edited with William Charney: Back injury among healthcare workers: causes, solutions, and impacts.

See "Read Others' Stories" at www.wingusa.org/story1.htm for the experiences of nurses whose bodies, lives and nursing careers have been badly damaged by work injury. Most are back injuries from lifting patients and most could have been prevented by modern lift equipment, instead of using the backs of nurses to lift patients who are growing ever larger in an epidemic of obesity in America.

Providing a voice for injured nurses, keeping the stories of "disappearing nurses" alive, is crucial - we are here, and we do too count!

The "Attorney" page (www.wingusa.org/attorney_page.htm) is an effort to link injured nurses with attorneys who are experienced in representing injured nurses, with the goal of expanding this service to cover the entire country.

Pathetically, back injured nurses often must undertake a legal battle with their employer to prove their injury is from lifting up to thousands of pounds per shift, and to fight for any benefits. As one nurse put it: "It's awful. You're injured. You're disposable. And now you need an attorney."

State leaders

Another new effort for WING USA is appointing a "State Leader" in all 50 states to provide injured nurses with a contact in their area for mutual support and encouragement, and for sharing experiences and information. So far 11 nurses and nurse assistants in 10 states have become state leaders and, again, the hope is to cover the whole country.

We'll soon be adding a State Leader page to the website to help injured nurses around the country connect to their local person. The basic requirements for being a state leader are willingness to communicate with other injured nurses in their state, to draw them together for mutual support, to validate their experience and to gain from the experience of others.

State leaders may also be involved in a variety of activities in their locale including group meetings, writing for publication, media outreach, speaking at events and political involvement for legislation on "safe patient handling - no manual lift" in their state and the nation.

Looking ahead ...

Our larger hope is for national nurse organisations, which have the power, structure, and resources, to initiate nationwide programmes to help injured nurses, particularly advocacy programmes to help work-injured nurses remain with their employer.

Though nurses may suffer many kinds of on-the-job injuries, the main thrust of WING USA remains back injury caused by lifting patients because it is the most common injury of nurses and because the injuries are so severe and so preventable - yet many nurses lose their job when disabled from being required to do the back-breaking work of machines.

Safety nets are few - and inadequate

In the US, health insurance is usually linked to employment. When injured nurses lose their job, they lose their health insurance. Workers' compensation is inadequate, usually temporary and does not "compensate" for the permanent loss of health, financial security, nursing position with seniority, retirement and health benefits - and sometimes for the loss of an entire nursing career.

For many years, nurses have been blamed for their back injuries, told they did not practice their body mechanics. But now the cat's out of the bag. Research has proven that body mechanics cannot prevent injury with patient lifting. No manual patient lifting technique is safe.

So where nurses have been caused to suffer painful debilitating injuries through unsafe nursing practice with manual patient lifting, it is past time for our nurse organisations to step forward and advocate for employers to retain their nurses who have been injured by lifting in permanent light duty nursing positions.

Doing the right thing

It is just not right for employers to cause injuries by requiring manual lifting and then terminate the employment of nurse victims when they cannot keep on lifting dangerous amounts of weight.

While efforts for policies and legislation for safe patient handling increase across the country, it is every bit as important to assist nurses to remain with their employer after being injured and/or disabled by unsafe nursing practice with manual patient lifting which continues in many areas.

Using the platform of WING USA, with a network across this land and beyond, I plan to continue raising awareness of the needs of nurses who have been injured while caring for others - colleagues who seem largely abandoned by the nursing community.

Anne Hudson RN BSN now works as a public health nurse for a county health department. Her activities with WING USA are strictly voluntary. All royalties from her book Back injury among health care workers: causes, solutions and impacts go to injured nurses, nurse assistants and other health care workers. She lives in Coos Bay, Oregon with her husband Bill. They have two sons and daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren.