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November 9, 2003A year of stress, commutes for striking nursesByRecord-Eagle staff writer PETOSKEY - After one year on strike, many Northern Michigan Hospital nurses have had to make huge adjustments to their lives. Yet they remain committed to the cause that prompted them to walk off the job. "You run the whole gamut of emotions - it's like a roller coaster," said striking orthopedic surgical nurse Dennis Johnson. "But then you weigh the options, and why we're out here," he said. "It doesn't encourage me to go back in." For most of the striking nurses, the past year has meant a lot of time on the road and away from their families. Officials for Teamsters Local 406, the union representing striking nurses, said more than 200 strikers are working at other health care facilities - downstate, in the Upper Peninsula, and in 15 other states, as far away as Hawaii. Roxanne Miller, a striking cardio-vascular nurse, has commuted weekly from the Petoskey area to a hospital in Marquette. On one memorable drive last winter, she said, the trip took nine hours. "There were roads closed, and I got stuck several times," she said. Rosemary Duggan, a striking clinical nurse specialist, sat recently in Teamsters' Petoskey headquarters. She had worked until midnight the night before at a hospital in Dearborn, and got up at 6:30 a.m. that day to return home to northern Michigan. "(NMH) can't take nursing away from me," she said. "They can't take my identity away from me. I'm still in nursing." Nurses said they've enjoyed the camaraderie of the picket line, but virtually all cited long hours away from family and other hardships. Both Duggan and Miller said they had no health insurance, opting not to pay hundreds of dollars a month for a federal program available to strikers. Miller said the nursing profession is in crisis. Nurses are getting older, fewer nursing students are replacing them and more and more people in the profession are opting out, she said. "(In other professions), you're not exposed to needle sticks that could give you serious or even fatal diseases," she said. "You don't have the stress of dealing with life-or-death situations, or have to deal with the disrespect you can receive from doctors." Nurses must fight for not only equitable pay and benefits, but reduced patient-to-nurse ratios and a greater say in care issues, said Duggan. "You are the eyes, the ears, the touch of the doctors, 24-7, when the doctor isn't there," she said. Only the intransigence of hospital management is keeping the strike ongoing, according to Miller. "It bothers me that I could be in there, I want to be back in there, but I can't go back," she said.
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