Registered nurses at Kaiser Permanente’s Los Angeles Medical Center will hold a vigil Thursday night to press the hospital giant to invest in safer patient care for children at its Southern California flagship hospital.
 
LAMC is Kaiser’s regional hub for pediatric heart surgery, provides care for children with cancer, and treats thousands of children up to the age of 16 from throughout Southern California, yet LAMC RNs have for months warned that inadequate staffing regularly puts children at risk.

What: Candlelight vigil by Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center RNs
When: Thursday, August 27, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Kaiser LAMC, 4867 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles

“Our nurses want Kaiser to invest in safe patient care for the kids. Families come from all over Southern California to our hospital for pediatric surgery and for cancer care.  We need Kaiser to hire more specialty nurses for the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit,” said LAMC NICU RN Aisha Ealey.
 
Kaiser, nurses say, has been inappropriately moving nurses out of their primary specialty areas to take care of patients outside their area of specialty expertise. That can lead to harm for patients and suboptimal care, nurses warn.
 
“We want Kaiser to end floating nurses away from their primary patients,” said Sandra Hanke, Pediatrics RN at LAMC.
 
LAMC RNs voted in late July to join the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United as the union representative for the 1,200 RNs at the hospital.  
 
Concerns over safe staffing and other patient care issues will be at the center of contract talks that begin in September between the RNs and Kaiser as the nurses seek their first CNA contract, joining with 19,000 other Kaiser RNs already represented by CNA.
 
Over the past six months, the LAMC RNs have documented more than 500 instances of what they regard as unsafe staffing.
 
During that same period, Kaiser has collected over $30 billion in premiums from members, revenue that nurses say should be invested in assuring safe patient care.