Trump Cuts Leave VA Hospital Nurses and Veteran Patients in a Crisis

My first job was an was an ICU nurse, and I’ve been a manager for a while, IV, Team Manager, Med, Surg Manager, and then my latest job at the VA has been as an informatics nurse, which means I’ve been working with physicians and nurses and helping them to learn how to document with our computerized charting system, developing charting tools and assisting them in that way.

Sharda Fornnarino: I’ve been a nurse for about 25 years at the Denver VA. I started off as an ICU nurse and then eventually evolved into the ICU and it was truly amazing. I worked with some amazing, amazing nurses. Eventually I got injured on the job, and then I had to transition from inpatient care to outpatient and since then, I’ve been a float coordinator — I go where there’s people needed. I worked in urology, assisting doctors with procedures. I’ve worked in neurosurgery, and I’m currently working in dermatology, assisting with procedures and helping running their clinics day to day and connecting the patients with the providers.

I would tell you that before all the stuff that’s happening now, the VA was a great place. A lot of us are veterans. I served in the military on active duty for four years, and I served in the reserves for about eight years, and I really connected with the veteran patients. There’s something about being in the military, you connect with all these people in just a different level. So that’s one of the reasons that had me join the Veterans Administration.

Maximillian Alvarez: About the VA Healthcare System itself – how does it work across the country and who it serves?

Irma Westmoreland: VA care is very special. The care that our veterans need is mostly care for injuries that they served while in combat or while in service. What we do better in the VA more than anywhere else is that we do PTSD, which is mental health care, spinal cord injury care, military sexual trauma care, care for rehab, rehabilitation, people with prosthetics. We do that better than anybody. The nurses and the doctors in the VA train every single year. We have to take a course in what kinds of injuries, in the different kinds of theaters of war or actions would we expect our veteran to have? Patients from World War I are different from patients from World War II are different from patients that were in the Korean War and the Vietnam War and in the skirmishes that follow.

Maximillian Alvarez: Since the new Trump administration came in, what attacks have been affecting you all and your work directly?

Irma Westmoreland: I represent nurses from all of our VAs. I hear from across the country what’s going on. What we have been seeing is that the first set of cuts that came forward was the terminating of probationary employees, all of the support staff kind of folks. In a hospital, where we work, every single person is important — whether it’s the groundskeeper, to the housekeeper who cleans the beds and turns over our beds so that we can get them back quickly and put a patient in. Whether it’s the dietary staff bringing the food, the respiratory therapist doing jet nip treatments, or the physical therapist, every single person is important. The person who transports our patients, or transports our labs down to the lab. All of those people are important. 

If you cut the secretary who’s answering the phone, who is going to answer the phone. It’s gotta be the nurse, right? And when I am having to stop, and or my nurses are having to stop and answer the phone, when a patient needs something, they have to wait, right? And that is a problem for us as nurses. 

What’s happening with all these cuts, and the proposed cuts, is to starve the VA of not only dollars, but to starve the VA of resources, like staffing. And so when we’ve had these cuts and we’ve got freezes, or have a vacancy, who’s going to want to come to the VA? If they know now, I’ve got firings coming. Guess who goes first, the lead senior! 

Who wants to come, if they know that? Who’s going to leave their solid job to come and work, even in an ancillary job, when they know those people are going to be fired first. So that starves us, not only of dollars, funding dollars that Sharda has been talking about, but also staffing dollars and resource dollars.

Sharda Fornnarino: The day-to-day work has been affected for the nurses. All these different jobs that people are saying, ​“Well, maybe that’s okay,” or ​“Maybe we can cut that,” or, you know, ​“Oh, it’s only…whatever,” it’s never an only. We all work together as a team. Whenever there is a cog in the wheel that’s missing, it’s a problem.

Maximillian Alvarez: Why should folks care about the administration attacking your Union’s ability to collectively bargain at places like the VA?

Irma Westmoreland: Well, let me just tell you right up front that President Trump’s order, if enacted, will take away the federal bargaining rights for over a million federal workers. And he said from his own lips that the reason he’s doing it is because those are the people that stand up and fight against him. And so the federal union in itself, or any union — us especially — is standing up, enforcing our contracts, enforcing our nurses rights, to stand for their patient and to talk about issues that are going on and to make sure that our nurses are feeded, treated fairly, and that we have adequate support to provide the care that we need for our veterans. And that’s our main job, nurses’ working conditions and our patients.

What we want folks to know is that the nurses are the union. I am the nurse. I am the Union. It is not the contract, it is not the building. It is not where we’re at. It’s because us as workers are going to continue to band together. We have joined the other five national unions in the VA to file two national cases in the court against these cuts to try to stop the federal work.

We’re not going anywhere.

Sharda Fornnarino: Ultimately, with nurses in the Union, where we’re representing and trying to fight for not just the nurses and the patients, but for their safety, their safety and working conditions. We talk about the working conditions. We gotta make sure that things are getting cleaned up, that our patients are safe, that the nurses are safe. We deserve to have to be able to go into work and not have to worry about if there are enough police officers to help me in an emergency in the emergency room if a patient starts to act out. We need to know that we’re going to always be safe and be treated fairly and not allow people to step on us as we go about our day.

And we as nurses, we will not abandon our patients, we will not abandon our veterans.

Maximillian Alvarez: What can supporting the union do to address the issues that all of us care about in this country right now?

Irma Westmoreland: Workers need to realize that all of the things that they value right now — paid vacation, Social Security, sick leave, any of those things — all came from workers uniting together with the public and fighting for those things. And right now, this fight that the federal workers are going through is just the tip of the iceberg. If this goes through, and the federal workers lose their union, they’re going to come for the private unions next, and then what’s next? Your rights.

Sharda Fornnarino: What we want people to do right now is to call their congressman and tell them they do not want these cuts to happen. Last week, I spoke to a veteran who was a little displeased with the fact that he had to wait so long to go see a provider on the outside. They had some issues getting records and all these things. He wanted to voice to me all his concerns that were happening, that he’s actually seeing right now — the effects of some of these cuts. And I did explain to him, ​“Well, you know, sir, this is what’s happening. This department has reduced in size. And so, of course, this is what’s going on. What can you do is contact your local congressman, your senators, and let them know you don’t want this to happen.” Unfortunately, at that time, he said, ​“Well, if I felt like it would work, then I would do something.” What I told him was, ​“If you don’t do something now, then what? When will you have a voice to do it?” So I encouraged him to use his voice now and stop what’s going on and to let his congressional people know what his best interests are, and to help support him. At the end of the conversation, he understood. Because if we don’t, if we lose this fight now, then where does it stop?

This episode of the Working People Podcast was originally published on June 4.