Founded in 1903, the California Nurses Association today represents over 60,000 dues-paying members in 165 facilities throughout California, and thousands more across the country through our sister organization the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  We are the largest and fastest-growing Registered Nurse association in the country and are dedicated to providing a voice for nurses and a vision for healthcare. 

 

Our continuing education, mentoring and professional development programs provide members with the tools and training they need to stay at the forefront of our ever-changing profession. 

 

Our advocacy for nurses and patients provides an important check to corporate domination of the healthcare debates. The CNA is now leading the fight to ensure that California’s first-in-the-nation law guaranteeing a safe ratio of RNs to patients in Emergency Rooms and hospitals is implemented.  This bill has been called one of the most significant bills in the history of nursing and will have an impact on hundreds of thousands of California patients, as well as on debates about healthcare reform across the country.  California’s Nursing Practice Act (originally sponsored by the CNA), requires nurses to independently advocate for patients, and we honor this responsibility from the bedside to the statehouse.

 

Over the century of our existence, the California Nurses Association has helped develop many of the modern norms of the RN profession, including establishing collective bargaining for nurses; mandating 40-hour work weeks, overtime pay, and retirement and health benefits for nurses and setting floating provisions and requirements that every patient be assessed once daily by an RN.

 

The California Nurses Association publishes California Nurse Magazin and Revolution: The Journal for RNs and Patient Advocacy.  CNA is a co-founder of the National Nurses Organizing Coalition and the California Nurses Foundation.

 

Deborah Burger, RN, is currently President of the California Nurses Association.  She has been nursing for 30 years and works in the diabetes unit of Kaiser Santa Rosa.