For Colorado ICU nurse Jordan LeBlanc, working at the Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center has been a rewarding experience because of his daily interaction with the veteran population.  

“What could be greater than our veterans. They’re funny. They’re kind. They’re forgiving. They think that we know best, even when we don’t, but most of all they trust us,” said LeBlanc.

It is that trust that nurses say they are pushing to protect, in the wake of what they say has been an ongoing hiring freeze from nationwide budget cuts to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

“We have 57 open vacancies that are frontline,” said Sharda Fornnarino, who is the director of the local National Nurses United at the Rocky Mountain Regional VA. “That basically entails the ICU, med surge, the OR, some of our surgical areas as far as the outpatient surgeries, SCI and our mental health area.”

On Thursday, nurses from the medical center rallied across the street from the building in Aurora to raise awareness about their existing staffing shortages and the challenges they have faced being able to serve the veteran population because of this shortage.

LeBlanc says often nurses like him now have to take on a greater patient workload and sometimes work more hours to do so.

“Our ICU specifically has been staffed at less than 85% of its functional capacity,” he said. “Right now, we’re at 18 bed ICU that only 12 of the beds are open. They’ve closed six beds because of staffing levels.”

Nurses say the staffing challenges does not just affect their morale, but it can also compromise the relationship they have with each patient.

“Any veteran or any patient within our system will get less than they deserve, less than the total dignity that each individual really deserves to be provided,” he said.

VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes responded to nurses rallying across the country, saying there is no freeze on hiring nurses and they are continuing to hire nurses needed across the country. Hayes’s complete statement is as follows:

VA’s top priority is providing the world-class care that Veterans deserve, and we are committed to making sure we have nursing staff we need to deliver the soonest and best care to Veterans.
There is no nationwide hiring freeze on VA nurses, and we are continuing to hire nurses, as needed, across the country to ensure that we can deliver world-class care to Veterans. Over the past 3 years, VA has aggressively hired nurses nationwide – increasing our nursing workforce by 14,000 nurses to a total of 122,000 nurses, the largest nursing workforce in the country and in the history of VA. VA is also retaining our great nurses, with turnover rates currently at 3.4% – far outperforming the private sector. There are also locations where we need to continue hiring nurses, and we are doing that – as demonstrated by the below hiring numbers.
Partly as a result of these hiring efforts and our great nurses, VA is currently delivering more care to more Veterans than ever before, outperforming non-VA care, and Veterans trust VA care at all-time record rates.

The VA’s office went on to share statistics on what they say have been all time high rates of veteran trust in VA care and decreasing wait times. However, Fornnarino says any hiring has been to fill strategic positions, where in reality all vacancies need to be filled.

“I haven’t seen more of those hires come to the bed side,” she said.

Nurses also worry the VA will become more privatized if staffing needs are not met.

“When we don’t have the staffing, we have these beds shut down,” said leBlanc. “That means that our veterans go to community care, and they’re not set up to provide veteran served ethical care.”

Well, the Colorado primary is in the rear-view mirror (as a kid, did anyone else think it was the “rear-voom mirror? I did). I know you and my editors would like me to write yet another detailed and lengthy analysis of the election results, right? (Editor: not so much.)

Ok, let’s talk about education.

As reported in Colorado Politics, with Gov. Jared Polis’s signature, Colorado has become the first state in the nation to create a “bill of rights” regarding education for students who become entangled in the legal system. I like it when we lead the nation.

As explained in Senate Bill 1216, the bill supports youth in the juvenile justice system. It establishes a bill of educational rights in a number of ways. The bill lists eight specific rights, though it also notes this list is not exhaustive and other rights may well exist.

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The goal is to get these young offenders to stay in school or return to school if they left. The new law requires students who are in the juvenile court to have alternative solutions to a general education, when appropriate, as well as providing for their prompt enrollment in educational programs and appropriate credit for course work completed while the student is, as the bill puts it, “justice-engaged,” which I assume means in custody or other judicial involvement. Currently, we see 66% of youth involved in the justice system dropping out of school before completing high school and only 1% end up getting a college degree.

Now, I can almost hear the eye-rolls of my conservative friends, who want to complain about yet another fuzzy liberal program to help criminals. But it is rather the opposite. Many studies have shown a person’s lack of education increases the likelihood the individual will become involved in crime or other antisocial behaviors. The investment made in education for, say, a first-time 16-year-old offender, will certainly be cheaper than long-term incarceration should that person, as an adult, again become engaged in criminal activity. The bill allocates $82,883 (an odd number to pick?) to kick the program off, and given it costs more than half that amount just to incarcerate a single prisoner for a year in Colorado, if successful the new program will pay for itself almost immediately.

I’m hoping the program will ultimately include trade school education, as we will always need HVAC experts, plumbers, electricians and other skilled tradespeople. I was fortunate enough to have the Air Force pay for my Ph.D., but I will readily admit a person who can fix a leaky pipe or a bad light-switch is more valuable to most Coloradans than anyone with a doctorate.

We live in an odd political era, when the GOP presidential candidate is calling for the halving of the federal Department of Education as well as other cuts to programs that, well, help people who are not rich. And if you are even a bit seduced by the MAGA message, please note it is in your personal benefit to support educational programs. More educated communities have less crime and more employment.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the unemployment rate for those without a high school diploma was 9.6%, far higher than the 3.7% we see nationally. And yet the national rate for those with a bachelor’s degree is even lower, at 2.7%. So, more education, especially to the level of high school graduate, equates to more people paying taxes and not taking federal benefits. So, supporting education for these kids will, over time, put money into the system rather than taking it out, and that’s a good thing.

No doubt the new bill will have its growing pains, and we will learn as we go along how to make the program better and more efficient. That said, the new law seems an excellent and inexpensive starting point. Heck, if it only ends up keeping two kids out of jail, it will pay for its initial costs. But more than that, a program to give kids a shot at a diploma will make our cities safer and the kids involved will have a sense of pride in their accomplishment, and they will face a much brighter future.

Once again, Colorado leads on education, and that is something we can all be proud of.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

The Black & Gold Can Win If:

It can remain focused on the task at hand as a primetime matchup against cross-town rivals, LA Galaxy, looms on the Fourth of July at the Rose Bowl. LAFC needs to continue to harness the hot play of Denis Bouanga and Mateusz Bogusz. Bogusz has a goal or an assist in all eight games during LAFC’s current league unbeaten streak. Additionally, LAFC is unbeaten at 10W-0L-1D this season when Bouanga has a goal or an assist.