We are nurses who grew up in Napa, raised our families here, and attended local nursing schools. We have dedicated our professional lives to caring for our community at Queen of the Valley Medical Center.

As dedicated Queen of the Valley Hospital direct-care RNs who work the floors every day caring for our patients the best we can, we are compelled to write a response to the commentary written by Marc Levin, a member of Queen of the Valley Hospital’s administration team (“Unfair portrayal of Queen of the Valley,” Sept. 3).

And yes, Mr. Levin, it is all about patient care. That’s because as RNs we have a legal and professional obligation to be our patients’ advocates and to ensure they receive the care they need and deserve. And in today’s hospitals, profitability sadly trumps quality care and patient safety.

Patient care, in fact, is the driving force that has led thousands of RNs in hospitals throughout the state to join the California Nurses Association (CNA). And patient care is why Queen of the Valley Hospital nurses voted by more than 64 percent to do the same.

As RNs and patient advocates, we navigate the waters between corporate decisions and patient safety every day on every shift. CNA gives us a collective voice in the everyday decisions that affect our patients’ care and the protections to advocate for patient safety without fear of reprisal.

The recent years have been difficult for the nurses and patients at Queen of the Valley Hospital. While providing care for an increasingly sicker and more complex population of patients, administration’s support for RNs diminishes every year. Nurses aren’t given appropriate break coverage, support staff, or equipment, placing patients and dedicated staff at risk, especially on night and weekend shifts.

Instead of working with us to resolve these problems, RNs experience contempt at the bargaining table. After years of hard work and dedication, we anticipate respect, but instead receive bad-faith bargaining. By bad faith, we mean retracting already agreed-upon contract clauses, failure to meet with any regularity, and threatened cuts to basic benefits.

We are professionals asking for respect, for the right to do what we have been trained to do: safely take care of patients and deliver the highest quality of care we can.

We are fighting for enforceable RN-to-patient safe staffing ratios in the contract because, despite a landmark law generated by our union, the CNA, we have to fight to maintain safe staffing every single day. Extremely sick patients aren’t getting the level of nursing care they are entitled to because the hospital doesn’t adjust the ratios when more care is needed.

We are fighting to have qualified RNs in each unit so we can safely leave our patients to take a break. We are fighting for an end to repeated unpaid on-call time, and the end to a four-year salary freeze that has made it difficult to recruit and keep experienced RNs at Queen of the Valley Hospital.

Anyone who has been treated by a nurse knows that nurses don’t want to leave their patients’ bedsides. We’ll do just about anything to avoid it. So when we’re out on a strike line, we’re worried about our patients inside. But ironically, that’s exactly why we have to go outside.

The bottom line is, RNs are the last line of defense between you, our patients, and the hospital’s desire for financial gain over patient care. Queen of the Valley Hospital, while beloved by us all, is, in fact, profitable. Queen of the Valley Hospital netted $18 million last year. It’s one of the 71 percent of hospitals nationwide that made a profit. This comes from the latest available Medicare cost reports that track these things.

With these kinds of resources Queen of the Valley Hospital doesn’t need to cut healthcare staff and defy state nurse-to-patient ratio laws. We’re objecting to a highly profitable hospital making decisions that jeopardize our patients and go against Queen of the Valley Hospital’s mission statement of “providing high quality and caring service.”

We know that the public understands. We have received an outpouring of support from the community.

If those who work in Queen of the Valley Hospital management far from direct patient care choose to look away while we are at the bedside witnessing the actual effect understaffing and cuts to all healthcare workers’ jobs are having on patient care, then we will do it for them.

In the meantime, nurses will do what you cannot. We will defend patient care with everything we’ve got. And we will raise the standard of care in our hospital and for our community as RNs in CNA hospitals have successfully done in their towns before us.

Capitelli and Mineau are RNs for the Queen of the Valley Medical Center and live in Napa.

The original posting: http://napavalleyregister.com/news/opinion/mailbag/it-s-all-about-patient-care-at-queen-of-the/article_0b654190-b9ec-5750-8157-c0cd53235ea1.html