Voice Concern Over Safe Staffing Issues at Hospital

Registered nurses from St. Joseph’s Medical Center (SJMC) will stage an informational picket on Friday, Aug. 21 over concerns about safe staffing issues at the hospital, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United announced today. By systemically understaffing the emergency department and other hospital units at unsafe RN-to-patient ratios, SJMC management is putting patients’ lives at risk, say nurses.

What: SJMC nurses and community members hold informational picket
When: Friday, August 21, 2015; 8 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Where: St. Joseph’s Medical Center, 1800 N. California, Stockton, CA
 

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 the baseline number, there was a 4 percent decrease in the odds of survival. 
Outside of the ED, nurses say management has drastically cut necessary support staff and failed to replace them, leaving nurses overwhelmed.

Additionally, nurses point out that breaks and mealtimes are often nearly impossible, due to the staffing crisis, and a “buddy system” of one nurse covering another during necessary meal and rest breaks means a double patient load for the covering nurse.

“We, the RNs, are here asking for the management to hear us,” says Zen Quebral, an RN with SJMC for 29 years. “We are asking for support staff to help with the care. We are asking for break relief so that there is another RN assigned to provide care for the patients, instead of having another RN ‘watch’ his/her patients for the break or mealtime. We are demanding safe patient care and safe working conditions.”
 

SJMC nurses say that patient safety is paramount. Retention of the most experienced staff is key to providing that, and RNs say that the hospital’s poor working conditions are driving away the kind of longtime, highly skilled nurses that patients in the community deserve.

“We´re picketing because the healthcare in this facility is on the edge of out of control. This is a public safety issue,” says Darryl Berryman, a respiratory and telemetry unit RN who has worked there for 17 years. “People come to our hospital sicker than ever before, yet we are working with fewer resources and expected to do more than ever before. We have an exodus of staff including doctors, new nurses, and older nurses (if they can retire) due to almost impossible expectations. We want to be proud of our hospital and the quality of our care, but we have needed help to provide a high level of care for years and are frustrated in attempts to get this help. This is why we are taking our struggle public.”