National Nurses United

NewsBriefs_Mar RAD's changes Korea back 4/2/10 6:11 PM Page 10 NEWS BRIEFS at a much greater risk for serious complications. The hospital is also staffing some intensive care units with more than 50 percent float nurses who are not as familiar with the unit. In a letter opposing the staffing changes sent to the Board of Trustees, which was signed by the majority of the nurses working in BMC's ICUs, the nurses wrote, "We implore hospital management to address the situation and avert dangerous conditions and tragic patient outcomes we fear may occur." At Tufts Medical Center, even at current staffing levels, nurses have reported difficulty providing the level of care patients deserve. However, in the last six months the hospital has engaged a high-priced consulting firm to develop a "new model" of care with a principal goal of cutting the amount of money spent on patient care. Nurses at Boston-Area Hospitals Protest Unsafe Sta∞ng MASSACHUSETTS egistered nurses at Boston Medical Center's East Newton Campus and Tufts Medical Center conducted joint informational picketing outside the hospitals in February to protest dangerous changes in RN staffing levels. "Nurses go to work every day with the fear that an unnecessary patient death or injury will take place under the current staffing conditions," said Barbara Tiller, RN, a nurse at Tufts Medical Center and co-chair of the nurses' local bargaining unit. R 10 N AT I O N A L N U R S E "The public has a right to know about decisions that are being made at these hospitals that jeopardize their safety," added Ann Driscoll, RN, a longtime nurse at BMC and chair of the local bargaining unit. Boston Medical Center, which is a level one trauma center, and Tufts Medical Center, which has a level one pediatric trauma and level two adult trauma center, care for some of the sickest patients in the Commonwealth, requiring more nursing care to keep patients safe. At current staffing levels, nurses contend it has been a struggle to provide the level of care patients deserve. Now, both hospitals are proposing and implementing staffing changes that increase the number of patients assigned to many nurses, and neither facility is adequately adjusting their level of nursing care based on patient acuity. At both facilities, nurses believe management is pushing staff to move patients through the hospital faster and faster without providing the resources to support this speedup in care delivery. In Boston Medical Center's intensive care units, where traditionally nurses have cared for no more than two patients at a time, the hospital is now demanding that nurses take a third patient, which, given the condition of the patients on this floor, would put these patients W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G The planned cuts involve limiting the amount of care provided by registered nurses, with RNs forced to care for more patients on almost every unit. In fact, according to the Mass. Hospital Association's "Patients First" website, many units at Tufts will have the lowest nurse staffing levels of any similar-sized hospital in the city. In creating the new staffing model, the hospital violated the nurses' union contract, which includes a process for the union and management to work together to address staffing concerns. Tufts management instead utilized the consultant to put on a show of listening to employees, common in these redesign schemes, where committees are formed and elaborate processes are implemented to give staff the illusion that they have helped develop the new model of care. "This process is a sham," said Julie Pinkham, RN, executive director of the Massachusetts Nurses Association. "Management knows from the beginning what cuts are going to be made and what model they will end up with. The committees are used to co-opt the employees and to make them believe they are responsible for creating the changes, the very changes that will undermine their ability to deliver safe patient care." —David Schildmeier MARCH 2010

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