ED Corner

I am writing this on September 7, 2026, aka Labor Day. Facebook is littered with pro-union posts. Just last week I was reminded that the nurses at Swedish Medical Center voted to join National Nurses United. Nurses across Colorado and across the United States are split on the need for unionization among nurses and to be clear the Colorado Nurses Association is not a union. Still, the idea of working together to improve working conditions and patient safety should be a goal of all nurses. When I say “together,” I mean all nurses.

Not until 1949 did the American Nurses Association agree to allow Black nurses into the organization, but “working together” certainly did not come easy. In 2022, the American Nurses Association issued a Racial Reckoning Statement, acknowledging that ANA continued to exclude Black nurses for decades after. That we have a “National Black Nurses Association” (NBNA), a “National Association of Hispanic Nurses” (NAHN), a “National Association of Licensed Practical Nurses” (NALPN), and even an “American Association for Men in Nursing” demonstrates that nurses have not reached the point of working together to improve working conditions and increase patient safety. 

CNA works with many of these organizations. As posted on CNA’s Facebook page, I joined representatives from NAHN and the Colorado Council of Black Nurses (CCBN) at the Colorado 150/America 250 event in Denver last month. While it was great to meet face to face with folks I see most often through Zoom meetings, it was also great to be together as we said “Hi” to community members who were nurses, were thinking about nursing, or whose lives were impacted by nurses. 

But “together” does not end at one event. We continue to work with CCBN and NAHN on an effort to reach middle schoolers and educate them on the value of a career in nursing. Community outreach like this has long been a strength of CCBN and we at CNA are both supporting and learning from this project. In this issue you will also read about Annette Cannon’s community work. You might be aware of the work done by the Workplace Advocacy and Nursing Education ANTs to reach out to nurse leaders in other states to learn about how we might implement a Safe Harbor program in Colorado if nurses feel they are subject to unsafe working conditions. The American Nurses Association recently sponsored a workgroup on Capitol Hill through which nurses, physicians, social workers, and healthcare systems met with congressional staff to educate them on workplace violence. 

And why this outreach? We all have different experiences. We all have different knowledge of different areas of nursing and healthcare. The people we serve have their own experiences. Nurses need to see through stigma, through racism, through sexism and work together to find workable solution. 

For some, working together means unionization. For others, it means mentorship. Still others find value in the meetings within professional organizations to find solutions to common problems and bringing those solutions back to their workplace. Personally, I am always looking for nurses to come together at the Colorado Capitol and testify on the many nursing related bills. n

Join together. Let’s make a difference.