Employees at Long Beach’s own St. Mary’s Medical Center will participate in a strike on October 30, to protest inadequate safety precautions and a lack of preparedness for an expected outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu strain. The protestors are part of a much larger effort aimed at three large Catholic hospital chains throughout California and Nevada, affecting more than 16,000 registered nurses who have concerns.
A press release received on Monday indicates that the nurses’ chief concerns are a lack of protective gear, improper isolation techniques for the ill, and staffing techniques that have nurses sometimes working 12-hour shifts without adding extra nurses or assistants.
“Our hospitals are not adhering to the safe staffing ratios law,” said Allen Fitzpatrick, a registered nurse at St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco. No quotes from nurses in Long Beach were provided.
“Nurses are being harassed by supervisors to accept unsafe assignments and not to take any breaks. Bedside nurses are busy enough tying to provide care to our patients. We need someone to stand up for safe RN-to-patient staffing.”
The California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee say that nurses at the hospitals have voiced their concerns for months – particularly in an August survey that outlined the hospitals’ drawbacks. The problems still remain, the associations say.
We’ll have more on this story as it develops…