DeAnn McEwen, RN is a co-president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United. McEwen is a longtime intensive care unit registered nurse at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. She leads the Joint Nursing Practice Commission, and as a member of the Legislative and Regulatory Committee, she has influenced healthcare public policy through legislative and grassroots advocacy, particularly by championing a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system in the United States.

A Nurse’s Care Plan for California

by DeAnn McEwen, RN

by DeAnn McEwen

Trust me when I say that politics has become very personal this year; I’m a nurse. As nurses we ask our patients to “tell us where it hurts.” There are those who are too young and too medically fragile who don’t have the ability to utter a word; yet we see the result of an eroding social safety net etched on their faces.

Far too many of the patients and people in the community that I care for are suffering as a result of our broken economy. There is hope for them, and we all have the ability to help if we make an informed decision and vote wisely. Before we’re handcuffed by lethal cutbacks and before we become accomplices of injustice and the erosion of our right to protect one another, please join nurses in voting “NO” on Proposition 32; and, “YES” on Proposition 30.