LETTER: Unionized workforce helps nurses, patients

Because of my current health issues, I know more than I’d care to know about the quality of care at University of New Mexico Sandoval Regional Medical Center. As an inpatient and an outpatient over the last several years, I’m frustrated and furious about the lack of specialists, an oversupply of ill-trained traveling nurses and physician assistants and an undersupply of fully certified nurses and other health care professionals to help patients when they need care.

I come from a union family and know the benefits of unions. Their first and most important mission is to work with management to ensure that they are able to provide first-rate services, in this case, accountable, quality patient care. This should be the hospital’s primary mission, but apparently it isn’t. I wrote UNMSRMC President Jamie Silva-Steele in June about my profoundly bad experiences, but I have seen no resolution to the problems. The way I see it, the less they spend on care, the more they earn. Infuriating.

In the long run, having a unionized workforce at the hospital will help not only the nurses and other professionals but me and all the other patients. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to fix the quality issues; it just takes the will to do it.

Helene Apper

Rio Rancho