Continuing Education (CE) Class Catalog

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.

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.

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.

Talk of a “nursing shortage” has become ubiquitous during the Covid-19 pandemic. In reality, there is no shortage of nurses in the U.S., only a shortage of nurses willing to risk their licenses or their patients’ lives by working in the unsafe conditions that have become prevalent in today’s hospital industry. Covid-19 has exacerbated a staffing crisis, decades in the making, as health care corporations have deliberately understaffed hospitals to cut costs and prioritize profits over safe working conditions and patient care.

This course will examine the root causes of the so-called nursing shortage, including the increased corporatization of health care and the continued devaluation of nursing labor that has left our health care system ill-equipped to handle public health threats like Covid-19. We will analyze the compounding effects of deliberate understaffing practices, from hazardous working conditions, harrowing moral distress, and escalating racial and gender inequity for nurses and patients. Finally, the class will offer a range of structural solutions to this manufactured crisis rooted in the demand for safe, sustainable, and equitable workplaces.

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

• Identify the structural problems that have driven short staffing in the hospital industry.
• Assess the impacts of the manufactured staffing crisis, including worse patient outcomes, high nurse turnover rates, and dangerous working conditions.
• Articulate possible solutions to the staffing crisis.

Instructors: Kel Montalvo-Quiñones

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.

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

Home All Alone: Assessing the Risks of the Acute Hospital Care at Home Trend

Health systems across the country are implementing so-called “Hospital at Home” programs. These programs transfer patients in need of acute care from the hospital setting to the home, where care is provided through a combination of remote monitoring, third-party contractors, and untrained members of the patient’s household. This course will analyze the drivers of this growing industry trend; assess the potential risks of the acute hospital care at home model to nurses, patients, and communities; and explore what the unchecked expansion of these programs could mean for the future of health care.

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

• Explain how and why the hospital industry is attempting to scale up the acute care at home model and articulate how this would likely affect the conditions of inpatient hospital care
• Describe the potential impacts of this model on nurses, patients, and our communities, and identify opportunities to protect the right to safe and effective hospital-based care

Instructors: 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.

Home All Alone: Preserving Patient Advocacy and Protecting RN Scope of Practice

This course will examine the Hospital at Home model of care delivery and describe why it is a threat to the scope of practice for Nursing as well as an attempt to remove the RN from the role of patient advocate. We will explore how this new model threatens health equity by creating a two-tiered care system and ultimately places undue burdens on both the patient and their caregivers at home. RNs will gain an understanding of this restructuring scheme and how to organize around this issue as a patient advocate.

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

• Articulate how Hospital at Home affects Nursing Scope of Practice.
• Explain why this new technological experiment in care delivery has unintended consequences for patients and their families.
• Provide RNs with the resources to push back against hospital restructuring.

Instructors: Rochelle Pardue-Okimoto, RN, Gerard Brogan, RN

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.