RN Union launches nationwide disaster relief program to assist Haiti residents

The nation’s largest organization of registered nurses tonight activated its nationwide disaster relief program to recruit nurse volunteers to provide assistance to residents of earthquake devastated Haiti, the National Nurses United announced Tuesday night.

“Nurses will be fundamental to the disaster relief process, to provide immediate healing and therapeutic support to the patients and families facing the devastation from this tragic earthquake”

Registered Nurse Response Network sent more than hundreds of nurse volunteers to the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina. RNRN has also sent volunteers to Sri Lanka after the South Asia tsunami and to help following huge Southern California wildfires. RNRN is affiliated with National Nurses United, AFL-CIO, the national union and professional association for Registered Nurses.

Details are still being worked out, but nurses can sign up at the NNU website, www.nationalnursesunited.org

NNU will also provide follow up information at www.twitter.com/nationalnurses for details and plans.

The 150,000-member NNU was formed last month through the unification of California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, United American Nurses, and Massachusetts Nurses Association.

Through RNRN, the organization hopes to send nurses to provide emergency short term and long term medical support, as it has in previous major disasters. Following Katrina, for example, RNRN volunteers worked with local healthcare and emergency agencies and officials in mobile clinics, area hospitals, and other healthcare settings in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

“We are calling on nurses throughout the U.S. to join us in this critical effort,” said NNU Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro.

“Nurses will be fundamental to the disaster relief process, to provide immediate healing and therapeutic support to the patients and families facing the devastation from this tragic earthquake,” DeMoro said.