Continuing Education (CE) Class Catalog

This course will examine what currently stands in the way of global access to the Covid-19 vaccine, and how we can overcome those obstacles. We will focus on how the pharmaceutical industry perpetuates life and death health disparities between rich and poor nations, most recently by barricading universal access to Covid-19 vaccine innovations and technologies. Most importantly, we will discuss how nurses can extend their patient advocacy beyond national borders by advocating for global vaccine equity.

Objectives:

• Explain the causes of current global disparities in access to Covid-19 vaccines
• Describe the policies and measures that can be taken to achieve global vaccine equity and universal access

Instructor: KB Burnside-Oxendine

Course Details:

This will be a 1-hour online class via Zoom for 1 hour of continuing education credits.

After registering, you will receive an invitation to the Zoom class via email. It is important that you respond to the invitation and register for the Zoom class prior to the day of the class.

CE courses are free to National Nurses United members. Classes are only offered to direct-care and staff RNs.

Covid-19 has revealed how care work is both essential to our society and yet severely devalued under capitalism. The devaluation of care work puts the lives of nurses and other care workers at risk by putting profits above workplace protections like PPE and safe staffing, and it contributes to the broader divestment from public health that makes our communities vulnerable to public health threats like Covid-19. This course will explore the central role of care work in our society, how and why this work is gendered and racialized, and the ways in which care work and care provisions, particularly healthcare, have been cheapened and dismantled. We will consider how the devaluation of care magnified the impact of Covid-19 and how the pandemic is being exploited to expand this devaluation and further erode public health. Finally, we will consider the opportunities the current crisis offers for envisioning and creating a world based on care rather than profit.

Objectives:

• Link issues nurses are facing during the pandemic to larger social and economic conditions that devalue care work and erode public health
• Articulate how structural racism and gender oppression contribute to the devaluation and exploitation of care workers
• Perceive how the pandemic offers both challenges and opportunities for fighting the devaluation of care work

Instructor: Kel Montalvo-Quinones

Course Details:

This will be a 1-hour online class via Zoom for 1 hour of continuing education credits.

After registering, you will receive an invitation to the Zoom class via email. It is important that you respond to the invitation and register for the Zoom class prior to the day of the class.

CE courses are free to National Nurses United members. Classes are only offered to direct-care and staff RNs.

When the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020, little was known about the novel coronavirus. During the course of the pandemic, scientific knowledge about the coronavirus has expanded. This CE class will review the state of the science regarding SARS-CoV-2 and infection control measures. We will focus on the scientific findings important for nurses and their advocacy for safe working conditions and safe patient care.

Objectives: After this class, participants should be able to:

• Describe major advances in scientific knowledge regarding SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 and related infection control measures.
• Discuss the implications of these scientific updates for nurses and their advocacy for safe working conditions and safe patient care.

Instructors: Rocelyn de Leon-Minch, Rochelle Pardue-Okimoto, and/or Jane Thomason

Length of class: 2 hours for 2 CE credits

CE courses are free to National Nurses United members. Classes are only offered to direct-care and staff RNs.

Workplace violence impacts nurses and other health care workers at extremely high rates and has been further exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic. This course will provide a review of the Cal/OSHA Workplace Violence Prevention in Health Care standard. We will facilitate a discussion on how nurses can use Cal/OSHA’s standard to advocate for workplace violence prevention and safer patient care conditions. Nurses will leave this class with strategies and next steps on advocating for workplace violence prevention in their workplaces.

Note: This class is open to all nurses but will be specific to California law and most applicable for nurses who are currently working in the State of California.

Objectives: Upon completion of this course, participants should be able to:

• Discuss the scope and requirements of Cal/OSHA's Workplace Violence Prevention in Health Care standard
• Discuss effective workplace violence prevention strategies to advocate for safer health care settings for both nurses and patients

2 hours for 2 CEUs

Instructors: Rocelyn de Leon-Minch and/or Jane Thomason

New technologies are being deployed in health care at an ever-increasing pace and with little transparency or accountability. This course will discuss the crucial role of nurses in determining how and whether such technology should be employed in the care of their patients. We will analyze how algorithms and related technologies have perpetuated systemic mistreatment of marginalized patients, especially when designed by non-clinicians guided by the goals of profit and efficiency. And we will detail how nurses are fighting to ensure that all communities receive the safe and equitable treatment they deserve.  

Objectives:

• Explain how purportedly neutral health care technologies can encode biases and perpetuate health disparities
• Articulate why effective patient advocacy entails safeguarding RNs’ clinical judgment, including the right to override health information technology
• Describe the limitations of technical fixes to health care, and explain why systemic changes are needed to ensure that technology can produce equitable health outcomes

Instructor: KB Burnside- Oxendine

Course Details

This will be a 2-hour online class via Zoom for 2 hours of continuing education credits. After registering, you will receive an invitation to the Zoom class via email. It is important that you respond to the invitation and register for the Zoom class prior to the day of the class.

This course will examine the unmet health needs and unique health care disparities faced by LGBTQI+ people in the US. Rather than approach gender and sexuality as innate facts, we will trace the history of these categories and analyze the ways in which they regulate people’s access and proximity to the resources, institutions, and material means of sustaining life. Accordingly, we will look at how cultural stigma, institutional discrimination, interpersonal and state violence, clinical pathologization, and legal attacks on civil rights converge to create the conditions of ill-health for queer and trans patients. We will also look to historical and contemporary examples of queer and trans resistance and resiliency in the face of gender and sexual oppression.

Within this context, the course reviews ongoing struggles for LGBTQI+ health justice and reveals nurses’ vital contributions to ensuring equitable care for LGBTQI+ patients. As patient advocates, nurses have a unique role in resisting institutional discrimination, fighting for social justice, and providing care that recognizes everyone’s self-determination, bodily autonomy, and right to health.

Objectives

Upon completion of this course, participants should be able to:

1. Identify the health and health care disparities faced by LGBTQI+ people and their root social, economic, political, and historical causes.
2. Analyze gender and sexuality as social determinants of health.
3. Describe the unique role of nurses in providing equitable care and resisting institutional discrimination.

Instructor: Kel Montalvo-Quinones

Course Details

This will be a 3-hour online class via Zoom for 3 hours of continuing education credits.

After registering, you will receive an invitation to the Zoom class via email. It is important that you respond to the invitation and register for the Zoom class prior to the day of the class.

From hospitals to health insurance to pharmaceuticals, today’s health care industries are increasingly dominated by monopolies. This class will explore the causes and effects of corporate consolidation and market concentration; how monopoly power in health care and other parts of the economy threatens the health and wellbeing of nurses, patients, and our communities; and what nurses can do to fight the monopoly epidemic.

Objectives: Upon completion of this course, participants should be able to:

• Identify the drivers of increasing monopolization in health care
• Describe the health and socioeconomic impacts of this trend
• Explain how to address the monopoly epidemic through collective action, regulation, and comprehensive health care reform like Medicare for All.

Instructor: Chris Nielsen

Course Details

This will be a 1-hour online class via Zoom for 1 hour of continuing education credits.

After registering at the link below, you will receive an invitation to the Zoom class via email. It is important that you respond to the invitation and register for the Zoom class prior to the day of the class.

Too many nurses have been hit, kicked, punched, spat on, threatened, and experienced violence on the job. When nurses are at risk for workplace violence, their patients are also at risk. This course is a deep dive into advocacy for workplace violence prevention. We will discuss facts, myths, and how to make a strong argument for workplace violence prevention. Come prepared to participate in conversation with other nurses advocating for safe patient care conditions!

Objectives: After this course, participants will be able to:

1. Discuss effective workplace violence prevention measures.
2. Describe ways nurses can advocate for workplace violence prevention to protect nurse and patient safety.

Instructors: Rocelyn de Leon-Minch and/or Jane Thomason

1 hour for 1 CEU