Registered nurses at Sutter Roseville will hold a press conference Tuesday, Dec. 15 to protest the recent waiver on safe staffing standards that has been granted to acute care hospitals. Nurses say they are urging Sutter Roseville to staff for safe patient care, not use the pandemic as an excuse to cut corners.

“Safe staffing saves lives. Waiving the ratios will make things less safe for the patients and the community we serve,” said Sutter Roseville registered nurse Meredith Piggee. “The hospital had months to plan for this surge, and lowering the amount of staff who take care of patients is not the answer.”

Who: RN’s, concerned community, patients and families
What: Press Conference
When: 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 15
Where: Starbucks parking lot (across from Sutter Roseville entrance) 1410 E. Roseville Pkwy, Roseville CA 95661

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) warned this week that a campaign by the hospital industry to exploit the pandemic as a pretext from rolling back safe staffing standards in California puts the lives of patients, nurses, and other health care workers at risk. During the pandemic, California hospitals have been bombarding state health officials for individual, temporary waivers in adherence to California’s landmark state staffing law, which requires minimum levels of registered nurse staffing for various hospital units.

California’s multi-billion hospital industry fought for years to block the state’s landmark safe staffing law, and then tried to overturn it, even though studies have shown the California law has resulted in up to 14 percent fewer patient deaths than in comparable hospitals, assured nurses more time to spend with patients, and kept nurses at the bedside far longer.

Since February, noted CNA/NNU Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, RN, “nurses have been working under enormous strain, putting their lives and safety in jeopardy, without enough personal protection equipment, and without sufficient hospital engineering controls to reduce the spread of infection that have turned hospitals into Covid-19 hot zones.”

After a 12-year fight, safe nurse-to-patient staffing ratios went into effect in 2004 against the objections of the hospital industry. Sutter Roseville nurses say they will never stop fighting, especially given that the pandemic is the absolute worst time to overload nurses with patients whose conditions are even more severe than before the pandemic.