The Chronicle WEDNESDAY. APRIL 19.2000
CIRCULATION 15.000
Sports Flag on the play The Confederate flag controversy has spurred several colleges' teams to avoid South Carolina. See page 15
THE INDEPENDENT DAILY AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
WWW.CHRONICLE.DUKE.EDU
VOL. 95 ; NO. 136
Hospital nurses force unionization hearing By JAIME LEVY The Chronicle
MATT KLEIN/THE CHRONICLE
SARAH HAIG, a Trinity freshman, votes in the class officer elections on a DSG-monitored laptop computer polling station. Yesterday’s was Duke’s first online election.
Candidate challenges senior election
Now that Duke Hospital’s nurses have filed their petition to unionize, both union proponents and Duke administrators are preparing for a National Labor Relations Board hearing late next week that will determine the terms of a union vote. The potentially heated hearing will involve a mediator from the NLRB, which will decide which employees would be represented by the union. Once these decisions are hammered out, the eligible employees will vote on whether to form a union that will have collective bargaining and Mike Israel
striking rights. In order to get to this stage, union organizers—in this case, the Interna-
tional Union of Operating Engineers —had to get at least 30 percent of Hospital nurses’ signatures to confirm that they wanted a vote. Although lUOE spokesperson David Miller would not say how many signatures he received, he mentioned that it would be foolish to file a petition for a vote that wouldfail. “We normally like to get 75 percent in a campaign,” he said. Hospital officials remain staunchly opposed to a nurses’ union, arguing that many of the nurses’ concerns cannot be addressed by collective bargaining, largely because the Hospital’s understaffing is a result of a nationwide
By JAIME LEVY The Chronicle
And you thought the days of election complaints and run-offs were over. Yesterday’s class officer elections, which drew more than 2,000 students to the online polls, resulted in secure presidential victories for Trinity sophomore Dorian Statom and Trinity freshman Heather Oh. But the final result ofthe Class of 2001 presidential elections, which Trinity juSee ELECTION on page 7 �
nurse shortage.
“I do not believe this will
a)
benefit
the nurses, b) benefit the patients or c) address the concerns they do have, which are very real,” said Mike Israel, CEO of Duke Hospital. To address concerns about high patient-to-nurse ratios, the Hospital has been closing patient beds; as of Tuesday afternoon, 28 beds were deliberately out of use. “I have very little disagreement with anything I’ve heard in meetings with staff,” Israel said, adding that 10 percent of nursing positions at the Hospital are currently unfilled. “What I differ with is those individuals who are proponents of thirdparty representation and collective bargaining. I don’t believe that that will bring about a resolution to the issues they have.” Israel pointed to the recent reshuffling of the Hospital’s administration as a mechanism by which employees could have more access to upper management. When Chief Operating Officer Brenda Nevidjon announced her resignation last week, Israel unveiled a new administrative structure designed to bring the rank and file closer to the Hospital brass. Now, Chief Nursing Officer Mary Ann Crouch will report directly to Israel. “The purpose of the administration is to see that the work environment is appropriate [for everyone]...,” Crouch said. “You don’t manage an organization without that thought in mind.” See UNION on page 9 �
Activists protest killing of pigs in med school classrooms First-year medic al classes use live anesthetized pigs to demonstrate certain medications’ effect on the body By ALEX SUNDSTROM The Chronicle
The practice ofkilling animals in first-year medical school labs sends a horrible message to students about respect for life, say animal rights activists in the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, which is now protesting against the use of live animal teaching labs at Duke and other universities. Activists said the use of animals is unnecessary and barbaric. “[Students] cud up causing the death of the first living patient they work on,” said Dr. Murray Cohen, who works for PCRM. “It precludes the development of compassion.” Duke’s School of Medicine is the only medical school ranked in the top 10 by U.S. News & World Report magazine that Dr. Murray Cohen still uses live animal labs, said Cohen. “It really isn’t possible anymore for the supporters of dog labs to say it’s essential to medical education,” he said. “Many surgeons have become surgeons withcut using animal labs.” Medical school first-years attend labs in which
pigs are first put to sleep and then used to demonstrate the effects of drugs on heart rate, blood pressure and other indicators.
“Students almost universally are in support of it. Less than 5 percent opt out,” said Dr. Bryant Stolp, the assistant professor of anesthesiology who directs the labs. One of those students, Evan Buxbaum, invited Cohen to give a talk in Zener Auditorium last Friday. PCRM also ran a full-page ad in The Chronicle that traded on ABC talk-show host Bill Maher’s celebrity to attack animal labs. Alternatives to animal labs should be seriously considered, Cohen said. “Probably the best would be the Harvard m0de1...,” he said. “Let them rotate in the operating room and let them see in bold relief an effort to cure disease.” He also suggested that students use computer programs to simulate the animal labs. “With [the computer program] SymßioSys you can do anything you can with a dog lab,” he said.
Distinguished historian speaks, page
The medical school, however, already employs these alternatives, Stolp said. Students rotate through surgery during their second year and use the SymßioSys program. Physicians at the School of Medicine said live animal labs make physiology and pharmacology more memorable. “Nothing beats hands-on learning,” said Stolp. “You can simulate only so much.” Stolp added that SymßioSys is not nearly complex enough to substitute for a live animal. “CD-ROMs are grossly deficient in the upper levels of learning,” Stolp said. “Right now there’s nothing available to us that does the job [as well as animal labs].” More expensive computer simulators, such as those used by Stanford University School of Medicine, might eventually be able to replace pigs at Duke, Stolp said. The simulators would cost $250,000 per year to install and $200,000 per year to operate, Stolp said, compared to the $4,000-per-year price tag for maintaining the pig labs. “We’d certainly consider going to something like that if we had the [financial] support,” Stolp said. He Sec PIGS on page 8 �
5 � Wetlands project will begin soon, page 6