The Nation - News from Feb. 10, 1989

Supplies are so short in Veterans Administration hospitals that nurses are scrounging the little souvenir bars of soap and shampoo bottles from hotels to bring to VA patients, a nurse told Congress. Supply accounts are frequently raided to pay salaries and avoid layoffs, an outside medical administrator told the House Veterans Affairs Committee. Claudette Morissey, a nurse at the Brooklyn, N.Y., veterans hospital and president of the Nurses Organization of the Veterans Administration, said in testimony submitted to the hearing: “At one VA hospital in the South, nurses were frustrated by the refusal of (the) prosthetics (department) to supply wheel chair cushions for patients on the long-term care unit. The nurses obtained a $25 donation, went to the local upholstery store and purchased a large foam mattress, and with an electric knife borrowed from the mother of one of the nurses, cut the foam to make wheel chair cushions for their patients.” She did not identify the hospital.