Attend our free pre-conference to learn about Code Red, a campaign for safe staffing and improved patient care.

Our healthcare system and the health professionals who staff it are at the breaking point. Hospitals were understaffed, in many cases dangerously so, long before COVID-19. And now, frontline caregivers are burned out, exhausted from the moral injury of being forced to provide inadequate care and leaving hospital employment in record numbers. Dangerous and destructive decision-making by corporate executives has resulted in the real crisis―a five-alarm fire fueled by working conditions that frontline caregivers can no longer endure.

The Code Red campaign is a response by the American Federation of Teachers and our healthcare affiliates around the country, including AaNA, who are leading efforts to secure safe patient limits and other crucial protections to improve the quality of care our patients receive. From state and federal legislation requiring safe patient levels, to enforceable workplace violence standards and collectively bargained contracts that help to recruit and retain frontline caregivers, the AFT’s national campaign, Code Red: Understaffing = Patient Care Crisis, leverages a variety of strategic approaches to improve the quality of care for our patients when they need it most.