Informational Picket – Monday, August 6, 6:00 a.m.– 8:00 a.m.

Registered nurses at HCA-affiliated Medical Center of Trinity will hold an informational picket Aug. 6, urging hospital management to address RN turnover rates and consistently comply with staffing grids. This will improve the recruitment and retention of experienced RNs, and ensure optimal patient care, say nurses.

What: RNs Plan Informational Picket, Urge Management to Address Turnover Rates and Invest in Retaining Nursing Staff
When: Monday Aug. 6, 6 a.m. – 8:00 a.m.
Where: Medical Center of Trinity, 9330 State Road 54, Trinity, Fla.

Nurses are also holding informational pickets this week at HCA-affiliated hospitals, Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso, Texas and Menorah Medical Center in Overland Park, Kansas.

Over the past five weeks registered nurses also held pickets at the following HCA-affiliated hospitals: Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo, Las Palmas Medical Center in El Paso and Corpus Christi Medical Center in Corpus Christi, Texas, MountainView Hospital in Las Vegas, Nev., Fawcett Memorial Hospital in Port Charlotte, Fla., Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford, Fla., Osceola Regional Medical Center in Kissimmee, Fla., Blake Medical Center in Bradenton Fla., Doctor’s Hospital of Sarasota in Sarasota, Fla., Oak Hill Hospital in Brooksville, Fla., and St. Petersburg General Hospital and Northside Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Medical Center of Trinity’s difficulty in retaining registered nurses is borne out by their own data, which nurses obtained through an information request. Over half of the nurses, 54 percent, have been at the hospital for less than three years, with over half of those, 26 percent, at the hospital for less than 18 months. Only 16 percent have worked at the hospital for more than ten years.

Data supplied from the hospital also indicates that Medical Center of Trinity is regularly out of compliance with its own staffing grid. One purpose of a hospital staffing grid is to assure that there are enough nurses to attend to patients' needs in a safe and timely way, taking under consideration the kinds of care required in each unit, including the degree of acuity or sickness. 

According to data supplied by the hospital, documenting shifts throughout the month of January 2018, various units were out of compliance with the staffing grid including, the Oncology Unit, 96 percent of the time, the Telemetry Unit 4 East, 90 percent, the Progressive Care Unit, 80 percent and the Surgical/Orthopedic Units 2 West, 76 percent of the time. 

“We are urging the hospital to take proactive steps to consistently comply with its staffing grid,” said Rosanne O’Malley, an RN in the Palm Harbor Emergency Department.  “That’s a key ingredient to ensuring that our patients get safe quality care.”

“As recipients of huge tax cuts under the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, they have the resources to invest for the benefit of our patients,” said Labor and Delivery RN Dawn McClung. “We’re urging our hospital to ensure optimal care by investing their resources in the recruitment and retention of nurses."

The 512 registered nurses at Medical Center of Trinity are members of the National Nurses Organizing Committee, NNOC/Florida. Their contract expired May 31, 2018 and they are in ongoing contract negotiations. NNOC/Florida is affiliated with National Nurses United, the largest and fastest growing union of registered nurses in the United States with 150,000 members. NNU plays a leadership role in safeguarding the health and safety of RNs and their patients and has won landmark legislation in the areas of staffing, safe patient handling, infectious disease and workplace violence prevention.