National Nurses United

4 N A T I O N A L N U R S E 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 D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 4 NEWS BRIEFS MASSACHUSETTS T he registered nurses of Berk- shire Medical Center, who are represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association/National Nurses United, picketed their facility Dec. 10 to protest what they believe are dangerous staffing levels, excessive patient assignments for nurses and other healthcare workers, and a punitive work environment that is compromising the qual- ity and safety of patient care for patients they serve throughout Berkshire County. This job action comes as nurses report a marked deterioration in patient care condi- tions in recent months driven by the hospi- tal's refusal to increase staffing to account for a dramatic increase in patient census following the sudden and illegal closure of North Adams Regional Hospital. At meet- ings with nurses' union leadership, hospital management has confirmed at least a 20 percent increase in patient census since the closing, and the nurses in the maternity unit have documented more than 300 more deliveries since the closing, with no plan by management to compensate for the predictable increase in census and no increase in staffing. Nurses in the hospital's emergency department report being overwhelmed with patients who are waiting longer for needed care and attention, and the inability to move patients through the system due to the lack of adequate staff on other units. Since the closure of North Adams Regional, Berkshire has had to call a Code Full on numerous occasions, which means all beds are full and there is no place to put patients, leaving patients being held in hallways waiting for a bed to open. "We are protesting out of concern for our patient's safety," said Gerri Jakacky, RN and co-chair of the nurses' local bargaining unit. "Nurses are appalled that after the closing of North Adams Regional Hospital, no effort has been made to ensure we are capable of providing appropriate care to what everyone knew would be an increase in patient census at our hospital." To compensate for the lack of appropriate RN staffing to meet the increased demand, the hospital is utilizing questionable strategies to deliver care. In many cases, nurses have seen their patient assignments increased, forcing nurses to take on extra patients at a time when the medical research clearly shows that when nurses take on too many patients at one time, the risk of complications and even death increases dramatically. The practice of assigning too many patients to nurses is not only dangerous, but for patients in the hospital's intensive care unit, the practice is illegal. Berkshire Medical Center hospital is violating a recently implemented Massachusetts law designed to ensure safer care for these patients. The new law mandates that no ICU nurse can care for more than one patient, or at the most two depending on the stability of the patients as determined by the nurses on that unit. BMC is regularly assign- ing its ICU nurses up to four patients at a time, double or triple the safe limit dictated by state law. The hospital is making up for the short- age of staff by the widespread "floating" of nurses, an unsafe process that involves moving nurses from unit to unit. At BMC, when nurses are shuffled from unit to unit, there is no continuity of care, and no guar- antee that the nurse caring for a particular patient is fully competent to provide the level of care the patient requires. Berkshire RNs protest employer's failure to increase staffing after absorbing overflow from closed hospital

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