Secret Committees

As we start the New Year we seem to be bumping into management’s latest attempt to make you think you have a say in your professional life here at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

If you have not been invited to “represent your colleagues in a special committee or focus group”, then you have not made it to the big time. If you have not been chosen to share your ideas, opinions or observations, then it is obvious that you do not have anything worth offering and especially not anything they want to hear.

Handpicked committees or focus groups have been engineered to be “yes” people to management and have been sworn to secrecy not to discuss the topics at hand. The real issue is what is the big secret? Do they think we don’t know that our working conditions are deteriorating right before our eyes? That our patients are put at risk every day by a hospital system whirling out of control? That some managers are the epitome of unprofessional, petty and vindictive? That the lack of support for nurses at the bedside is continuing to erode any confidence we had in nursing administration’s ability to effectively bring about measurable change?

Let’s be clear: THIS IS NO SECRET.

We have real problems and we need real leadership. Stop whispering behind closed doors, swearing nurses to secrecy and start having real conversations. The MNA Committee continues to speak loud and clear on all nursing issues. May we suggest nursing leadership do the same?