News

Staying Connected through CIR – Where to Find Us

When you spend your life in the hospital, it can be hard to keep up with the world outside. CIR can help you stay connected, even if you just have a few minutes to get online. Your colleagues want to hear what you’re up to, whether it’s a new contract, a campaign against budget cuts, or an international service trip.

There are lots of ways to get plugged in to CIR:

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CIR Leaders Speak Out in the LA Times, NY Times

CIR leaders on both coasts had letters published in major newspapers recently, addressing issues that affect resident physicians across the country.

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CIR Members Elect a New Executive Committee

From left to right:  Dr. John Ingle, Secretary-Treasurer; Dr. Hillary Tompkins, Executive Vice President; Dr. Farbod Raiszadeh, President.

This spring, the membership of the CIR elected new resident physician officers to its Executive Committee, the governing body that guides the operations of the union between annual conventions. Each of the national offices -- President, Executive Vice President, and Secretary-Treasurer -- changed hands, as did all but two of the eleven Regional Vice President positions. As always, CIR lived up to its motto of being governed by residents for residents by electing a cross-section of its membership, showing diversity in specialty, geography, country of origin, and even political party.

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Residents Use Patient Care Funds to Improve Quality

Blanket-warmers, portable dopplers, discharge medications for the indigent – these items are a given in many hospitals, but are often missing from the safety-net hospitals that CIR resident physicians call home. That’s why housestaff in several CIR chapters have negotiated Patient Care Funds (PCFs), dedicated money that the hospital sets aside to pay for equipment and services that can help residents better care for their patients.

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Change Is Coming to St. Barnabas Hospital

Legal Victory Paves Way for Residents’ Voices to Finally Be Heard
Almost a year after the resident physicians at St. Barnabas Hospital voted on whether to join CIR, their votes were unsealed and counted on June 11, 2010.  With 119 voting in favor of the union and only two against, it was a resounding victory for the residents who have fought for almost two years for a union.  An additional 47 ballots were not included in the vote count because of legal challenges from the hospital.

For the residents who started the organizing campaign in 2008, it was a sweet victory. Many had already started to discuss concrete improvements they could negotiate when the hospital comes to the bargaining table.

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CIR 2010 CONVENTION: Delegates Celebrate An Unprecedented Year

Health care reform. Hospital closures. The earthquake in Haiti. Exciting new leadership for the union. Recounting a year full of challenges and triumphs in the areas of collective bargaining, new organizing, and patient advocacy through political action. These were the themes as over 160 CIR delegates from across the country came to Philadelphia to participate in CIR’s National Convention from May 21-23, 2010.

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Doctors Celebrate the Passage of Health Care Reform

No issue commanded so much attention throughout 2009-2010 as the national debate on health care reform. CIR, working with other physician organizations, was on the front lines every step of the way, demanding that the reform proposals moving through Congress focus on incentivizing quality of care, not just quantity of care, growing and nurturing the physician workforce of tomorrow, particularly in the areas of primary care and prevention, and protecting the most vulnerable patients and families that resident physicians see every day.

As such, it was fitting that during the final few days of action in Washington DC before health reform became law, CIR was there!

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Talking About Resident Work Hours and Supervision

For decades, patient safety groups have been calling for measures to better protect patients from medical error. Now, advocates are turning their attention to the strong evidence linking the working conditions of sleep-deprived and/or under-supervised resident physicians and medical error.

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CIR President Speaks at Disparities Conference

In early 2009, CIR rallied with community members and healthcare workers to stop the closure of St. John’s Queens Hospital and Mary Immaculate Hospital, run by Caritas Healthcare. Despite political pressure, frantic negotiations and a public outcry to keep them open, both hospitals closed, leaving a huge void among the people who depended on the institutions for jobs and health care.

Neighboring hospitals – including Flushing, Jamaica and Elmhurst – are still struggling to accommodate the flow of patients who were formerly served by the closed hospitals.

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Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the BMC Decision

If you ask residents if they are students or employees, most will point to their long hours, job responsibilities, and paycheck and choose “employee” without a second thought. Yet for decades, this question has been the basis for legal challenges from hospitals to the right of interns and residents to join a union. December 2009 marks the tenth anniversary of a landmark decision granting employee rights to housestaff training in the nation’s private teaching hospitals.

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CIR Contracts Stay Strong in Tough Times

The economic downturn dominates the headlines and is a source of concern across the country. But for safety-net hospitals, including most hospitals staffed by CIR resident physicians, the bad economy brings twice the trouble. More people are losing their health insurance when they lose their jobs and relying on public programs like Medicaid or joining the ranks of the uninsured. This means more people depending on our hospitals. At the same time, tax revenue is down at the state, county, and city level, causing governments to cut their budgets for health care precisely at the time when more people are using these services.

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CIR on Work Hours in the New York Times

CIR paid  respects last week to Sidney Zion, a journalist and author who led the national charge for reforms in the training, workload and supervision of resident doctors after his daughter’s death  in a New York City hospital in 1984. Zion died at age 75 on August 2.  The New York Times published the following letter August 7 by CIR President L. Toni Lewis.

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CIR Pushes for Patient and Resident Safety as Challenges Mount to Institute of Medicine Report on Resident Work Hours

Universally viewed as ”the gold standard” of academic research,an Institute of Medicine report is usually accorded great respect and legitimacy — but not this one!  The IOM’s “Resident Duty Hours: Enhancing Sleep, Supervision and Safety” was produced over 12 months by a panel of experts and vetted in the most rigorous of peer review processes.

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CIR Newsletter

CIR News: A quarterly publication where you can find out what residents in CIR hospitals across the country are doing. 

 CIR News March 2010

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