Improvements To Patient Care? Strikes By Suzanne Gordon

The Power of Strikes in Healthcare The most important thing in healthcare is safety in patient care. To provide safe patient care, enough staff to care for each patient promptly is necessary. However, a fully staffed hospital is a dream many healthcare workers continue to fight for. The article, “How Have Healthcare Workers Won Improvements to Patient Care? Strikes” by author Suzanne Gordon, explains many of the obstacles healthcare workers must overcome to achieve a safe staff-to-patient ratio. Gordon uses the elements of counterarguments, evidence, claims, and appeals to strengthen her argument in the article. The article provides effective counterarguments and the argument that through strikes is how healthcare workers won improvements to patient care is effective by providing reliable evidence, supported claims, and clear appeals.

Summary

In “How Have Health Workers Won Improvements to Patient Care? Strikes,” Suzanne Gordon argues that for healthcare workers to provide safe patient care, they need to go on strike. Gordon claims that the main reason for healthcare worker burnout is the lack of staff in their workplace. She explains that many of the employees fight for years to get the proper staffing and the right help, however, nothing ever changes until they finally decide to go on strike. A lot of the evidence Gordon provides is based on the California Nurses Association (ASA) and their

In the article, Gordon states, “Healthcare professionals like Johnson do not view striking as their first option. Most spend years going through "the proper channels," speaking with management, and engaging in endless internal negotiating sessions to resolve patient care problems. When they do finally go public with their concerns, their actions often result in improvements to patient care” (Gordon, 2019, para.7). The assumption is that strikes are not necessary but in reality, they are, and Gordon proves it