Letters To The Editor

BUSINESS AND LABOR

Davis neglected a few details

In his “Letter to the community,” Sacred Heart Medical Center CEO Skip Davis said a great deal. However, he omitted some important details.

The last time the registered nurses signed a contract, Sacred Heart administration immediately and unilaterally changed the R.N.-to-patient ratio, and not for the better. They currently propose to “hear” our concerns but not necessarily respond to them. Do you really want an administrator to decide if you need an R.N. or an aide?

Sacred Heart wants the right to place all R.N.s on mandatory call after they have worked their scheduled hours. This means that after I work my scheduled days, I can’t plan doctor appointments, school field trips, weekends out of town, season symphony or theater tickets, or anything else. I can’t have any interests outside of my employment. And what do we do about child care? R.N.s work around the clock.

The Washington State Nurses Association must represent all Sacred Heart R.N.s, even though we receive no union dues from many of them. The hospital is more concerned with union strength than with the nurses’ right to work. Why shouldn’t WSNA be fairly compensated for time spent representing nonunion nurses?

The union has said repeatedly, and firmly believes, that wages are not the real issue. Sacred Heart registered nurses are fighting for your safety. Please let Davis know that you support us. Bonnie Turnbeaugh, R.N., O.N.C. Spokane

Quality care: Nurses have a point

What are the major issues at play between Sacred Heart’s administrators and its registered nurses? Money and safe staffing.

Administrators claim the core issue is salary. The trained nurses, many with baccalaureate degrees, claim they are paid at about the same level as the construction trade workers at Sacred Heart. Too, they cite years of training; evening, night, holiday and weekend duty; all compounded by high-stress case loads.

An impartial observer can well question whether the pay issue would be different if nurses were not basically humanitarian, or male rather than female.

Nurses are sensitive, too, to the fact that there is plenty of money available in other areas of health care. For instance, three of the 17 richest men in the world head pharmaceutical conglomerates. Furthermore, the New England Journal of Medicine recently reported that in the state of Washington, 26 percent of the total income of hospitals is spent on administration.

Instead, I believe the real core issue for the nurses is patient safety and quality of health care. Nurses properly underline their concern over replacing trained nurses with aides.

It is just as reasonable to suggest that the number of skilled nurses on staff can be compromised as it is to suggest that our nation’s airplanes can be safely piloted by partially trained personnel.

The safety of patient care should never be compromised by the dilution of staffing levels for skilled nurses. This the administration should champion as vigorously as the registered nurses. John E. Sonneland, M.D. Spokane

Hospital expectations unreasonable

I found the huge ad that Sacred Heart Medical Center management ad in the Feb. 22 paper very interesting.

I know many nurses at SHMC. They work day, evening and night shifts, on weekends and all holidays. They also work hard performing tasks most people would rather not even think about, let alone do. But apparently, this isn’t enough, as now Sacred Heart management wants these nurses to be on call 24 hours a day! B.A. Lee Spokane

Registered nurses take selfish tack

I was distressed to hear on the news several statements made by the Sacred Heart nurses. Remarks were made that if they were hospitalized, they would want the care at their bedside to be given by a registered nurse, not a nurse’s aide or licensed practical nurse.

I’ve been an LPN for many years and find that to be most insulting to my professional status and to the nurse’s aide. L.P.N.s and nurse-aides are qualified and do give excellent bedside nursing care. Most are qualified to do most procedures. The nursing staffs should look at the whole-team approach to patient care and not to themselves only.

I have worked with many registered nurses through the years. I have the utmost respect for them and would follow their direction without question. But if I needed hospital care now, Sacred Heart Medical Center would not be my choice. The split in one discipline feeling they are worth more than another would not be to my benefit or that of any patient.

Those striking because of pressure from the union or fellow workers, you have my sympathy. You are the ones who work as a team, the ones who don’t put yourselves above the team effort.

An education is wonderful and to have a degree is laudable but that doesn’t make you a better nursing staff than the others. Peggie Boothe L.P.N. Spokane

Nurses appreciate public support

Thank you, Spokane, for your great show of support during the nurses’ information picketing at Sacred Heart Medical Center. Words cannot express how great it was to see how totally behind us you are, with all the honking, thumbs-up and words of support.

We can now go back and hopefully settle this contract with the message that you have made loud and clear that you expect the quality care you are paying for. Safety is always cheaper in the long run. They will have to look at other areas for their budget cuts - maybe fewer trips for administrators to Maui. Karen Frogner R.N. Colbert

Think about how, why unions formed

To paraphrase what a famous man once said, once we forget our past, we are doomed to repeat it. American workers and consumers have forgotten what our forefathers went through to provide an adequate wage, safe workplace and an eight-hour work day.

We’ve forgotten the sacrifices of men and women at the turn of the century. Look at the Pullman strikes and why unions were formed. Men died to improve safety and working conditions, to have the right to stand up and say, “No, the company does not own me, body and soul!”

We’ve forgotten how to stand together. More and more workplaces have been downsized in the name of sometimes obscene profits. We give more and more time in the vain hope that we won’t be next to go. Our families suffer, we suffer and society suffers.

What can you do? If you have a union in your workplace, join it. For those who take the benefits without helping with the monetary support, shame on you. There are numerous unions that will represent all workers.

Consumers, complain loudly and clearly about the lack of staff. Let them know how you feel about not being able to talk to a real person instead of voice mail, electronic mail or the infernal program where you push buttons endlessly and never get a real person. You have the ability to change things. Pull your monetary support. Fill out those cards that ask how they’re doing. Business worships money. Your voice does make a difference.

Don’t forget our past. Don’t forget the sacrifices. Know that you can make a difference. Janine M. Bork Spokane

IN THE PAPER

Story about Goldman an outrage

Shame on staff writer Jim Camden and shame on the Review. The Review ran a front page article slamming Sheriff John Goldman based on a rumor from the 1994 election.

Was it a slow news day? Were they trying to keep up with subscriptions from the National Enquirer? Do they think they are junior Ken Starrs?

Did any laws get broken? Has anyone been charged with breaking Public Disclosure Commission rules or have they been fined? I think not. Did this just turn up? I think not.

Come on, folks. I was born at night, but not last night. People have fought and died for First Amendment rights to freedom of the press. Don’t taint that struggle with gossip. If there is no bad news, how about some good news about people helping people, instead of these National Enquirer-type headlines. I’d like to be proud of our local newspaper, hoping it is honest, forthright and unbiased. Is that asking too much? George J. Orr Spokane

CREATION VS. EVOLUTION

For immutable truths, refer to God

Thank you, editorial writer D.F. Oliveria, for a refreshing article on the creation-evolution debate. I would love to see an open debate on it - exactly what today’s academia would most dislike. They have fought fiercely in the past to shield the theory of evolution from anything that might test its scientific accuracy.

I hear the cries already. Evolution has been proven scientifically. Not true. Science deals with things that are testable, observable and demonstrable. Evolution has none of these qualities. People believe in evolution mostly because that’s what they’ve been taught. That’s what I’ve been taught and I believed it until I started to look at the facts for myself. To my great surprise, creation fit what we have today a lot better than evolution ever could.

I also used to be intimidated by “scientists have proved it, so it must be correct.” Wrong again. Ever check the track record of what science has told us? What they tell us is fact today is disproved and replaced with a new fact tomorrow.

What God has told us never changes. Count on it. He said he created the world as it is - end of subject. Mike A. Matiska Spokane

Christians’ patent on truth invalid

Victor E. Buksbazen’s Feb. 21 letter aptly demonstrates the flawed fundamentalist attitude that Christianity is the only way anyone could be happy and fulfilled.

Native Americans who lived here before the coming of the Europeans did not have Christianity and had none of the problems he mentions: materialism, cynicism, utilitarianism and societal depersonalization. They were happy with their way of life, had all they wanted and took no more than they needed. The Europeans and their “advanced” civilization and religion changed all of that.

Teachings put forward by Jesus in the Bible are by no means original. For example, many of them can be found stated somewhat differently but with the same meaning in the Tao Te Ching, written by Lao Tzu in China some time before Jesus was born. If living by the teaching of Jesus is the only way to achieve happiness, how did a man from a completely different culture write many of the same teachings before Jesus was alive?

If people would accept others’ beliefs and not try to force their own beliefs on them, perhaps we could get along with each other better.

When one of the Native American chiefs was asked why he did not want schools on his land, he replied that the teachers would only teach his people to fight about God, and they did not want to learn how to do that. Edmond J. Stowe Coeur d’Alene

Science, belief can harmonize

As a recent, 18-year Spokane resident, I read with interest, “Creationism part of mix elsewhere” (Feb. 22). Why must the idea that there is a creator and the theory of evolution be at odds?

I believe a higher power has created this marvelous universe. There is too much order and beauty for it not to be so. I also believe that evolution was the method the creator used to bring us to this point. They are not mutually exclusive, except when you insist, against all scientific evidence, upon a literal interpretation of Bible phrases.

The Bible contradicts itself in so many places that it only makes sense when interpreted figuratively. Dennis R. Higgins Kent, Wash.

Proof’s in the pathogen

Editorial writer D.F. Oliveria’s commentary (Hot Potatoes, Feb. 24) implies that the concept of evolution is outdated and being rejected by scientists. Sharing the same page, Ralph Nader describes a new strain of multi-drug-resistant tubercle bacillus which, as the result of evolutionary adaptation, survives antibiotics that previously controlled the disease.

It’s clear from this that evolution not only happens but that it is alive and well in today’s world.

Oliveria would like his daughter to believe evolution to be a “flimsy theory that has hung on a century too long.” However, instead of asserting that modern science is abandoning the concepts of Charles Darwin, he should be grateful that they are using those principles daily in the fight to understand and conquer such diseases as MDR tuberculosis. Sam Van Wyck Spokane

Adaptation, mutation prove theory

Two letters to the editor on Feb. 20 and a front page article two days later dealt with the “controversial” nature of the theory of evolution. Yet a news article in the Friday issue illustrated that evolution is a proven fact and has taken place within our lifetimes.

The article reported the development of a new antibiotic needed because of the development of resistance to current antibiotics by the “super bugs of the 1990s.” What happened was that the earlier antibiotics killed off most of the germs they made were to combat, but some germs, because of genetic variation, survived and established a new population genetically different from the old, so the old medicine no longer works.

That’s what evolution is - development of a new life form as a result of successful adaptation to the environment. If it can happen with germs, it can also happen with species of plants and animals, although ordinarily not within the 30-year time span for bacteria.

Let those who do not believe in evolution who are infected with the potentially deadly staphylococcus aureus tell their doctors not to use the new medication because the germ could not possibly have evolved into a form the old medication couldn’t handle. Robert E. Forman Colville, Wash.

Remember the ‘many mansions’

Editorial writer D.F. Oliveria’s Feb. 24 Opinion column regarding evolution vs. creation merely reinforces the misguided opinion that science and religion are mutually exclusive.

Scientists who test empirically have no sense of morality, and religions that value faith have no sense of reality, according to this faulty viewpoint.

Have both the evolutionists and the creationists ever thought about the possibility that, in the infinite wisdom and love of God, the universe was set up by God to operate in the cause-and-effect manner it does? Why can’t science be seen as the discovery of the wonders of the creator? Why can’t religion be seen as the adoration of a God who would give us such an imaginative and vast universe to live in and study?

The debate between science and religion will be an ongoing one, but each faction could stand to be a bit more tolerant of the other. There are many ways to understand our relationship to God. As Jesus said in John 14:2, “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” Angela Mitchell McMullin Spokane

Scientists doubt evolution theory

In this decade alone, knowledge has increased at a mind boggling speed. This has led to a feeling among scientists that the theory of evolution is collapsing.

Evolutionary scientist Arthur Keith has admitted, “Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, which is unthinkable.”

Dr. Henry Norris was a firm believer in evolution until he began to examine the evidence for himself. He soon realized that the whole theory was not supported by scientific evidence at all, but rather that evolution had become a new religion for those who wished to escape the consequences of the truth of the Bible concerning a personal God, salvation and judgment. Wayne Norris Spokane