For the second time in two years, nurses at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center voted in favor of union representation. The National Labor Relations Board announced that the nurses rejected, by a 113-97 vote, an employee's request to decertify the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee as their representative. It has represented the nurses since 2008.

Flying into Haiti for the first time, Rockport resident Grace Nelson thought she had seen devastation before. The 25-year nurse had spent years in the Peace Corps delivering aid around the world in the 1970s, including in war-torn northern Africa. But, she said what she saw in Haiti was something far different.

A new study on nurse staffing levels was hailed by the California Nurses Association on Tuesday as proof that the state's nursing-ratio law is saving lives. If similar laws were enacted in such states as Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the number of patient deaths in those states could be reduced by as much as 14 percent, according to the study conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and published in the journal Health Services Research.