Registered nurses from Kaiser Permanente’s Los Angeles Medical Center (LAMC) rallied outside the hospital March 5, to call attention to what they view as eroding conditions for their patients.

LAMC RNs have been meeting with hospital administrators for more than nine months to address systemic staffing issues that have been plaguing the hospital. Despite these efforts, hospital administration, nurses say, has refused to take the necessary steps to curtail the rampant patient safety deficiencies affecting the entire hospital.

Some 1,200 RNs work at the Los Angeles Medical Center. They are currently organizing with the California Nurses Association and are seeking a union election to join the 18,000 Kaiser RNs represented by CNA at 86 other Kaiser facilities who recently reached a new three-year contract that addresses similar concerns to those raised by the Los Angeles RNs.

Issues at LAMC include management policies to require RNs to work in units outside their area of expertise, inadequate RN staffing that can put patients at risk, and a chronic lack of break and resource nurses which causes nurses to frequently work without the ability to take a break.  

For months, nurses have been documenting the short staffing levels in the hospital through Assignment Despite Objection forms (ADOs), which describe patient assignments they believe to be unsafe, and submitting them to hospital administration.  However, hospital administrators have refused to meet with the nurses to adequately address the rampant staffing issues and have ignored the nurses’ concerns documented in the ADOs. 

Furthermore, the hospital is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on temporary nurses when it would be more cost effective and safer for patient care to hire qualified, permanent nursing staff.  It has become a common practice, say the RNs, for nursing administration to staff units almost entirely with temporary nurses even though hospital management has recognized the dangers this practice poses to the patients and nurses responsible for delivering care. 

“RNs routinely face unsafe staff assignments, in violation of state law,” said LAMC RN Joel Briones.  “LAMC is one of the busiest hospitals in the area. Hospital administration has stalled for months in responding to and addressing the concerns of nurses that would make it safer for patients, their families, and nurses delivering care at LAMC.”

“For months now, we have put forward our proposals to management which address nurses’ concerns of unsafe staffing due, in part, to recruitment and retention issues, missed meals and breaks, and the lack of responsiveness from nursing administration to these concerns,” said Tinny Abogado, LAMC RN.

"As nurses, we take our role as patient advocates very seriously and we will continue to advocate until the hospital takes proactive steps to reverse the downward spiral in standards here and invest in quality care," said Jennifer Del Rosario, LAMC RN.