Ingalls nurses announce informational picket citing short-staffing, workplace violence

Registered nurses from UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial Hospital (Ingalls) in Chicago will be among dozens of nurses meeting with lawmakers on Thursday, March 20 to demand the passage of the Safe Patient Limits Act, which would mandate safe staffing laws in all hospitals across Illinois, announced National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU) today. State Sen. Celina Villanueva introduced Senate Bill 2022 in February to address the unsafe workloads assigned to nurses every day.

“Right now at Ingalls, we are fighting for a contract that will require UChicago Medicine to adequately staff our hospital as far too often management leaves us with bare-bones staffing that endangers our patients,” said Catherine Uzoras, a registered nurse in the telemetry unit. “But we are well aware our nonunion nurses do not have the mechanisms and protections we do to fight for safe staffing, that is why this legislation is so important. As we fight for our contract and our patients, we must also fight for patients across Illinois as every patient deserves the optimal care that comes from safe staffing.”

"Nurses are the backbone of the Illinois healthcare system and when they are in trouble, we are in trouble,” said State Sen. Celina Villanueva. “Hospitals put all of us in danger by assigning more patients than any one person could handle. SB 2022 will protect nurses and patients alike by ensuring safe staffing according to patient needs; it will encourage nurses to continue working at the bedside and most importantly, it will save lives."

Who: Registered nurses from Ingalls Hospital and State Sen. Celina Villanueva
What: Rally for Safe Patient Limits Act
Where: Illinois State Capitol Building - Blue Room
401 S. 2nd St. Springfield, Ill.
When: Thursday, March 20, 2025, 11:30 a.m.

Illinois has no law limiting the number of patients a registered nurse can care for at one time. As a result, registered nurses are consistently required to care for more patients than is safe, compromising patient care and negatively impacting patient outcomes. This legislation would protect patients and improve health care by limiting the number of patients assigned to a registered nurse, appropriately broken down by patient care area and designed to ensure safe and effective patient care.

A 2021 study found that If Illinois enacted the Safe Patient Limits Act, thousands of deaths per year could be avoided and patients would experience shorter lengths of stays, resulting in cost-saving for hospitals.

Studies have shown repeatedly that short-staffing leads to increases in hospital wait times and high turnover rates. At Ingalls, short-staffing has had a negative impact on nurse retention rates.

“In the last four years, more than 585 nurses left Ingalls due to unsafe staffing levels and untenable working conditions,” said Caroline Freeman a registered nurse in the post-anesthesia care unit. “When nurses don’t have adequate resources to care for their patients as they know they should be cared for, they suffer moral injury and moral distress which lead them to leave the bedside.”

Ingalls nurses say short-staffing and the lack of mandated safe staffing laws in Illinois has led to intolerable wait times at Ingalls’ emergency department. With wait times of up to 15 hours, nearly 130 patients a month left the emergency room without being seen in 2024 for a total of more than 1,500 patients for the entire year, according to records provided by UChicago Medicine. 

“Our patients deserve better", said Kelly Flavin, a registered nurse in the rehabilitation unit. “As a safety net hospital, treating low-income populations, we need better staffing to reach our patients when they need us. When patients leave the ER without care, their illnesses can become more severe, and they return to in a medical crisis.”

Ingalls nurses announced they will hold an information picket at their hospital in the next few weeks to educate the public about the issues they are facing at their hospital.

National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States with nearly 225,000 members nationwide. NNU affiliates include California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, DC Nurses Association, Michigan Nurses Association, Minnesota Nurses Association, and New York State Nurses Association.