TODAY, Weds. May 25 — Informational Picket 11 a.m. — 1 p.m.

Current Staffing Levels Compromise Care, RNs Say

Registered nurses at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital will hold an informational picket today, to protest growing problems with short staffing and unsafe working conditions at the hospital.

“Quality care requires staffing levels that reflect the judgment of the RN responsible for the patient based on factors including severity of the patient’s condition and needs for nursing care, not just the number of patients in the hospital. Management is ignoring that and at the same time, failing to provide adequate levels of ancillary staff," said Sandy Reding, RN, OR. "The RNs at Bakersfield Memorial strive to provide optimal, timely, and safe care. That’s why we are calling on management to take immediate action to rectify the conditions that are compromising our patients’ care," said Reding, who is also a member of the California Nurses Association bo ard of directors.

What: Picket - RNs Demand Improvements in Staffing to Ensure Quality Care
When: Wednesday May 25, 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Where: Bakersfield Memorial Hospital, 430 34th Street, Bakersfield

“The hospital's current conditions are a recipe for compromised care: Under staffing, high acuity of patients, missed meals and rest breaks," said Rachael Hernandez Brown, RN Pediatrics unit. "We work 12-hour sh ifts and it is imperative that we get these breaks to avoid fatigue that can lead to medical errors and injury of patients and nurses. We have discussed all of these issues with management and they have refused to address them. That's why we are holding a picket, to let the community know what is going on here and invite them to join us in calling for improvements."

The RNs, affiliated with the California Nurses Association, have filed formal grievances but management has refused to address the nurses' concerns. Units across the hospital are regularly staffed according to the "census" or number of patients without regard for the acuity or severity of their condition. Patients are being delayed transfer from the ER due to short staffing in their destination units. Understaffing in the areas of ancillary staff means that RNs are routinely pulled away from attending patients at the bedside, in order to perform tasks that would normally be done by clerks, technical staff and nursing assistants.

Numerous studies have shown that safe staffing levels are key to safe patient care and positive outcomes. A recent study by the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing showed that for each additional patient per nurse on medical-surgical units beyond five per nurse, there was a 4 percent decrease in the odds of survival. In an earlier study the Penn researchers concluded that inadequate nursing levels lead to thousands of avoidable deaths each year. They also found that a patient's risk of death within 30 days of admission increased by about 7 percent for every additional patient in a nurse's workload.

With study after study proving safe staffing saves lives, RNs say that they are highly concerned about understaffing at Bakersfield Memorial and the other two hospitals in the Bakersfield area operated by Dignity Health. According to nurses, the hospital is so short staffed that the assigned charge nurses, who are supposed to be on hand to manage patient care needs and give support to other nurses, are also being assigned patients, preventing them from being a necessary resource on the unit.

Nurses say the informational picket is a way to let the community know what they’ve been fighting for inside the hospital—and how much Bakersfield Memorial has been compromising patient care.