Registered nurses who work for San Bernardino County at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, in Colton, California, will hold an informational picket on October 1 to highlight their patient safety concerns, including short-staffing and management’s failure to recruit and retain experienced nurses, announced California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) today.

“We are seeing experienced nurses leave our hospital because they are not able to give the care they know their patients deserve,” said Veronica Morales, a registered nurse. “Right now, we have more than 300 nurse positions open. It is imperative that we retain experienced nurses, as these nurses are critical to helping mentor newer nurses and their experience and expertise are essential in providing our patients and our community the highest quality of care.”

Who: RNs at San Bernardino County
What: Informational Picket for Patient Safety
When: Tuesday, Oct. 1, 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Where: Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, 400 N Pepper Ave, Colton, Calif.
In front of the main lobby entrance

Within the last seven months, nurses have flagged more than 125 incidents that put patient care in jeopardy due to short staffing. Nurses say because there is a lack of transport teams and break-relief nurses, they are forced to leave their patients in the care of charge nurses to take a break or when they bring a patient to another part of the hospital for a procedure. This lack of break relief or transport staff takes charge nurses away from fulfilling their responsibilities, including providing support for unit nurses and overseeing the flow of patients and nursing assignments on the floor. This short staffing leads to a deterioration of patient care.

Nurses are deeply concerned that the county has proposed adding a provision in the contract that would allow them to cancel nurses’ scheduled shifts if the census in their unit is low. Nurses say this practice is dangerous for patients as census can fluctuate dramatically over a 12-hour shift, and should the census rise, there will not be enough nurses on site to provide optimal care to patients.

“The county is proposing to cut scheduled staff at any time, when we are always in need of more staff,” said Leslie Oyes, a registered nurse in the burn unit. “We do not have enough staff to begin with, and this proposal will make a bad situation even worse. We are fighting to protect safe staffing processes so we can provide the best patient care for the community.”

Nurses have been in negotiations since April for a new union contract. The RNs urge management to invest in nursing staff and agree to a contract that provides an expansion of health and safety provisions. In August, nurses spoke out at a San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors meeting about their concerns.

“The turnover rate of registered nurses at San Bernardino County is high due to our staffing crisis,” said Diana Lucatero, a registered nurse in the medical intensive care unit. “We are constantly being asked to do more with less. This translates into patients not getting the care they deserve.”

CNA represents more than 1,500 registered nurses at San Bernardino County.

California Nurses Association/National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the nation with more than 100,000 members in more than 200 facilities throughout California and nearly 225,000 RNs nationwide.