Listen to ‘On The Line’: Your nurse may go on strike
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On The Line
Host: Cary Junior II
Producers: Cary Junior II, Darcie Moran, Tad Davis
Executive producers: Anjanette Delgado, Maryann Struman
Guests: Kristen Jordan Shamus, Detroit Free Press reporter; Kate Wells, reporter at Michigan Radio; Katie Pontifex, President at Professional Employees Council at Sparrow Hospital; Amy Brown, Chief Nursing Officer at Sparrow Hospital; Pamela Nelson, 72; Chad Goetterman, 45
Theme song: "Fort Trumbull" by DJ LostBoy, Detroit.
Email: ontheline@freepress.com
On this episode: Cary Junior II examines the health care staffing crisis in Michigan that's escalated to the point where nurses at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing are threatening to walk off the job. The union's 2,200 members will vote Nov. 16-21 on whether to authorize a strike.
He talks to Free Press health and gender reporter Kristen Jordan Shamus, who has covered the pandemic since March 2020 in collaboration with Bridge Magazine and Michigan Radio's Kate Wells. They look at the union's worries about patient safety and demands for higher wages, better health insurance, more staffing and a contractual guarantee of personal protection equipment like N95 respirators, to care for COVID-19 patients.
For more
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Michigan man claims Fr. Solanus Casey helped him get over COVID
Health officials urge Michiganders to get a booster for COVID
Lawmakers urge aid for health care industry as staffing shortage looms
Transcript: November 12, 2021
S1: [Horns honking] CARY JUNIOR: This is the sound of health care workers at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, not treating patients or checking vitals or any of that. They were picketing about their current union contract and the conditions at the hospital. Hundreds were gathered, including supporters like Pamela Nelson, who is the mother of a registered nurse and was posted up on one side of a group of picketers with a sign.
PAMELA NELSON: This says “I support our health care workers.” Everyone needs a hand to hold when they die. And so many times during COVID, that's all there was was a nurse to hold someone's hand. And two years ago we lost a daughter to breast cancer and a nurse held her hand. I can't say enough about what nurses and the health care workers do, and they need, they need us now. And I think it's time that we help them.
PN: Hospitals are facing a critical shortage of health care workers, but health care workers say what's lacking is support that would keep them around. Federal dollars have been allotted to help in the wake of COVID 19. But workers say the problems go back before the virus arrived. The pandemic just made it worse, so they got even louder. [protesters shouting] Now, I'm Cary Junior II And this is “On the Line.”
KRISTEN SHAMUS: So I'm sorry that it's a little bit noisy on the recording, we have a lot going on here. I'm actually working in my house today. I can hear the neighbor running a leaf blower. I've got several kids and dogs barking, so I apologize for any background noise you might get in this interview.
CJ: Awesome, no problem, Christine. Can you start by introducing yourself and letting us know what you do at the free press?
KS: Sure thing. I'm Kristen Shamus and I'm a reporter at the Detroit Free Press. I cover health and I cover gender.
CJ: If you've read anything about COVID 19 by the Free Press. Chances are you've seen Kristen’s work. She's been in the trenches covering the pandemic since its onset, and she hasn't been doing it alone.
KS: The collaboration with Bridge Michigan and with Michigan radio actually began pretty much at the beginning of the pandemic. It includes me and Robin Erb from Bridge Michigan and Kate Wells from Michigan Radio.
KATE WELLS: Yes, I'm Kate Wells. I am a reporter with Michigan Radio NPR. We started from this place, especially. I think it's hard to even remember how the spring of 2020 felt, but there was this very real sense that at any moment we were going to become Italy and essentially have these hospital systems be overrun, especially with how hard Detroit was hit during that first surge. And our editors and reporters got together and said, you know, we really, as independent media organizations, don't have the ability to essentially build sources and be in every single hospital or health system in the state. And it really came from this point of, you know, if we pooled resources, the number one thing we need to do is be able to keep people informed. And that's where this collaboration really came out of. It's been a real, I think, for our for our listeners and for our readers, has been a real benefit.
CJ: When did you first start hearing concerns about health care worker burnout?
KS: We've been hearing about it really since after the first surge. I mean, when we first saw COVID hit in March of 2020, you know, as soon as that surge sort of dissipated and we went into summer, everyone was already sort of looking at, well, when will the next one be? Can we avoid the next one? And as we saw cases rise again in October and November of 2020, there was a lot of talk about how tired health care workers were. And by the time we peaked again in December of 2020, you know, health care workers were saying, we've just had it. We're so tired. We are so stretched thin. There are people who,
KW: you know, couldn't or weren't able or didn't feel safe getting health care during the first 18 months of the pandemic for completely understandable reasons didn't feel safe going to the hospital, and now are just doing a lot worse. And so what these health care workers are seeing is they're just getting bombarded by all ends. COVID hasn't gone away. Everybody has what you would call really high patient census, a really busy but also really high patient acuity, which is the word they use for just like how sick somebody is and the level of care that they need. So you put together, you know what, 20 months at this point of a global pandemic and being on the front line, you put together the staffing shortages that we are seeing right now, meaning that there's never enough people to give patients the kind of care that these, you know, nurses and providers want to be giving them. And it's just it's it's it's just a recipe for burnout and exhaustion and frustration.
CJ: And those frustrations are playing out at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing. Their union contract expired at the end of October.
KS: And so there's about 53 different classifications of workers that cover about 2,200 people who right now are working without a contract and are trying to negotiate a deal with management.
KATIE PONTIFEX: A lot of places, we are suffering from short staffing, but it's not due to a nursing shortage or a health care professional shortage in that matter.
CJ: That's Katie Pontifex. She has been a registered nurse at Sparrow for just over 10 years. She's the president of the Professional Employees Council there. She's also a board member of the Michigan Nurses Association. All of that means she knows a thing or two about what goes down in hospitals.
[6:26]
KP: It is, you know, a lack of nurses and health care professionals who are willing to put themselves in the position of working in an unsafe environment.
KS: Let's talk a little bit more about that. So you're saying there isn't a shortage of health care professionals. It's a shortage of people willing to work in these environments.
KP: Correct. And over four million nurses nationwide who are licensed and credentialed and have the ability to work in acute care if they wanted to. And they just simply won't do that because it's such an unsafe environment. As cliche as it sounds, it's a calling. We want to serve others, and if we can't do that in a way that is in, that it is intended to be, and I can't do it to the top of my ability, then I don't want to risk harming you in that in any manner. So I'm not going to do it at all. Or I'm going to do it from my desk somewhere, or I'm going to do it behind a phone and advocating for you on some other, you know, level that I can use my license.
KS: What do you mean by not safe, not safe for the workers, not safe for the patients, not safe for both? And why?
KP: Both. So it would be it would definitely be unsafe for both, and it's by way of one another, right? So we don't have the staff in our departments in order to provide the hands needed to take care of the patients and then the patients then suffer because of that. The research supports that one nurse to four patients is ideal. On a short day, you can probably safely, you really can safely care for five. What we're seeing right now is those nurses are caring for six, seven, eight and sometimes on night shift nine or 10 of those patients. And that is extremely scary. If we have that many patients, we are literally bouncing from room to room to room in hopes of just seeing them to get their vital signs or their blood pressure, their heart rate, their temperature. When you're not able to spend the time that you need at the bedside with your patients, you miss intricate details of change that could be life-threatening to that patient. It weighs very heavy on us, which is why a lot of people are leaving acute care.
AMY BROWN: For the most part, the past couple of weeks, I think that we've been staffed better.
CJ: That's Amy Brown, Sparrow's chief nursing officer.
AB: Probably a month ago, we've been struggling on the night shift in particular, with regard to nurses having to take more than what our contracted staffing ratios are. We always try to hire nurses and, and keep the ones that we have. And so one of the things that we've done is we have temporary agency help here with regards to nurses and PCTs, or patient care techs. And that helps with patient ratios and also our thought processes is that it helps the people that are here, that are employed by Sparrow, too, because it just lessens the burden on them.
KP: They are including I will absolutely give them that. The problem is we're losing them as fast as we're bringing them in. And then, that creates another problem where you have brand-new nurses who are now training new nurses because we've lost our experienced nurses. And I remember being a brand-new nurse 13 years ago, and I was put in those positions at my last employer, where I maybe had six to nine months of experience behind me, and now I'm training someone else. I didn't know what I didn't know.
AB: Our focus has really been on those inpatient adult units, and what they have told us is what will help them stay if they can have ancillary support staff help them, because all of those roles play a really important piece for the nurse when they're caring for our patients. So one of the things that we did was we offered retention bonuses to some of those employees because what we heard from our frontline staff is that they were kind of bearing that burden of having to do multiple other roles.
CJ: After the break: What workers want and how the results of negotiations impact community health.
[10:44]
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CJ: And we're back talking with reporters, Kristen Jordan Samus and Kate Wells, along with nurse Katie Pontifex, about hospital staffing issues that are happening in Michigan and across the country. And so, what are the staff members asking of the health system
KS: So they want higher pay. They want what they say is a fair contract. They're asking for a wage that tracks with the cost of living, right, with the annual inflation rate. They're asking for PPE, so those personal protective equipment pieces like masks and gowns and N95 respirators, that sort of thing to be put into the contract that they will be guaranteed to have enough of that. They don't want to pay more for their health insurance and they want better staffing. They want the guarantee that they're not going to come in to work every day and be asked to take on extra patients because they don't have enough nurses or enough, you know, nursing assistants or respiratory therapists. So last week, they had an informational picket. So the union got its members together. There were about a thousand people who went outside of the hospital and they carried picket signs. They spoke about the issues that they have and what it is that they want in the contract negotiations. They called that an informational picket so that they could let the community know what was going on within the hospital.
DARCY MORAN: Thank you so much for speaking with us.
PN: You're welcome. CJ: Producer Darcy Moran spoke with the attendees at the informational picket.
DM: Can I get your name?
PN: My name is Pamela Nelson.
DM: And what does that say here?
PN: This says “I see red to support my son.” He's been an RN for 25 years and I'm a proud mom. A lot of times he worked in the COVID tent and he would get up and he has to drive an hour and a half here, an hour and a half home, and two weeks ago, when he was here working, he worked a 14-hour shift, and when he was done, he had to stay for an hour after work. He was exhausted, just exhausted. He had to stop on the way home and rest on the side of the road for a while because he was just so tired he couldn't do anymore.
CJ: Then Dorothy spoke to Pamela's son Chad Gutterman.
DM: Are there any examples in your life or with a particular patient where you can give a specific example of, say, this hurt that individual, this hurt my family? What's going on here?
CHAD GUTTERMAN: There was a time with my stepfather. He was admitted to the hospital for sepsis, and he was admitted to the ICU. He has COPD. He was having a hard time breathing and he needed the neb treatment. And this wasn't at this hospital. This was at another hospital. But he had asked several times for, for a nebulizer treatment, which was ordered. But the staff just didn't have time to come give it to him. He waited almost four hours for the breathing treatment, which was a long time when you're having a hard time breathing. In the end, he started coughing so hard, having a coughing fit, that he actually fixed his heart and put it back into the regular rhythm. In a way, luckily for him, it worked out, but it, you know, could have been much worse.
KW: You know, nurses at various hospital systems will say they don't feel like their hospital system is doing enough to retain workers.
CJ: Kate Wells of Michigan Radio Again.
KW: And that they don't have essentially what they need to be able to do their jobs well. And the pushback that we hear from hospital systems is, you know, this is a national issue. They'll say, you know, they are trying their best and they're trying to bring in new nurses and they're trying and, but the nurses who are there say it's, it's not enough. We're just not seeing enough. Michigan is not unique here at all. It is happening in every part of the country. It looks a little bit different depending on moment to moment. You know, we saw during the last few months that the South got hit really hard with various COVID surges. And so things, you know, for a while, there were really, truly overflowing.
DM: Everything we've talked about, how do you feel seeing this presence here?
CG: Yeah, I really, it was really important to show that it's not just the health care workers, you know, it's the whole community really is, you know, affected by what's going on right now. And I want to be out here for is just for money because if it was just for money, I could get a job someplace else. It's about the safety in the community and it's about their safety and their health care.
PN: I am blessed to come and see what a turnout we have and all the support that my son has here. It's time that we are here for the people that take care of us.
[17:14]
CJ: Can you just speak to the greater impact beyond just, you know, health care workers and what they're receiving from these health systems, but also the greater community health and what this means for us?
KS: Yeah, absolutely. So, when hospitals are short-staffed, when hospitals are also facing a crisis situation with a pandemic and with a higher rate of hospitalizations because people are just sicker, right? It means that it's going to take us a lot longer to get the care we need when we go to the emergency department.
KW: It's a crisis. It is absolutely at a crisis level. And I don't say that to be alarmist, but I think we got so used during the pandemic to sort of thinking of threats to the health care system as sort of coming in these waves, right, that we didn't want to run out of ventilators or something like this. But now we're at this stage where it's sort of almost like a persistent crisis.
KS: If I were to trip and fall down the stairs right now and bang my head so badly that I had a concussion and a brain bleed and my husband took me to the hospital, it may take me hours to get the care I need, instead of getting immediate care when I get to that hospital, I might be looked at and said, Well, you know, she's not that bad. She can wait. And then let's say that I get a hospital bed inside the emergency room. There may not be enough one-on-one care for my nurses and my care team to notice if I start to deteriorate. And so there's always that risk, too.
KW: So it's not quite at the clean point anymore where we can just sort of like watch the number of COVID hospitalizations and use that as sort of the canary in the coal mine. So it's a more persistent crisis, but it is also a more complicated factors behind it than we saw during various surges of the pandemic. This isn't the kind of thing where if we all just necessarily, like, stayed home, we could solve it. Some of these problems are because people had to stay home for so long and they're now really sick.
KS: And so these are the things that are the forces that, that we're sort of dealing with. And this is one of the issues in the Sparrow negotiations that's gotten contentious is that the nurses are saying, “Look, either you're going to address the staffing situation or we are not going to work, we're going to strike, because we feel like it's not safe anymore for patients.”
CJ: And where are we now in the saga specifically with Sparrow in their negotiations?
KS: So Wednesday morning, the union at Sparrow, the largest bargaining unit at Sparrow, it's the Professional Employee Council of Sparrow Hospital. It's a local of the Michigan Nurses Association. They have authorized a strike vote, so that means that they'll be voting, their members will be voting November 16th to November 21st to decide whether or not they want to strike.
KP: We have reached the point where, you know, they need to understand that they are behind ...
CJ: A registered nurse at Sparrow Hospital. Katie Pontifex, again.
KP: … especially in comparison to other Michigan hospitals. No one wants a work stoppage of any kind. But ultimately, if that's what we'll take to show them that we're serious and we are willing to do what we have to do in order to keep our community safe.
AB: Obviously, neither, neither one of us wants a strike.
CJ: Chief Nursing Officer at Sparrow Amy Brown.
AB: We are both committed to negotiating in good faith. We have sessions set up next week to meet with a federal mediator because we are committed to reaching a fair contract that is good for our caregivers, good for our patients, and good for our hospital.
KS: While that vote is happening, the negotiations will be ongoing with management and a federal mediator is coming in on November 16th to help with the bargaining process. So at any point, while that voting process is going on for a strike, they could come up with a deal and that could call off any strike threats or fears. But we'll see what happens, you know, if, if they vote to authorize a strike. The union has said that it will give 10 days notice and that the strike could begin and they could walk off the job as soon as December 1st.
CJ: Well, Kristen Jordan Shamus, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me about this. I really appreciate it. So much, so much. So much.
KS: Take care. Thank you.
CJ: This episode has been updated to include statements from Sparrow Hospital representatives. We'd also like to extend our gratitude to Kate Wells of Michigan Radio. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us for this episode. This episode was produced by me and Dorothy Moran with help from Ted Davis, Peter Majerle and Adrienne Roberts. Anjeanette Delgado and Maryann Struman are our executive producers, and Peter Batya is our editor. The music for the show is called Fort Trumbull and was produced by DJ Lost Boy. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, leave a rating and subscribe. It really makes a difference. All right. See you next week.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Podcast: Your nurse may go on strike
