Nurses picket outside Good Sam Hospital in Puyallup. ‘We are already spread so thin’
Nurses picketed Wednesday outside MultiCare Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup for changes related to staffing and breaks.
“The vast majority of the 750 nurses at the hospital support the picket,” the Washington State Nurses Association said in a news release Tuesday.
The hospital system said in a statement Tuesday: “MultiCare remains committed to bargaining in good faith with WSNA with the goal of reaching a fair contract that supports a safe, equitable and economically sustainable workplace. MultiCare has been in active negotiations with WSNA since February, and we have made significant progress to date. Good Samaritan Hospital will be open and serving patients on Wednesday while WSNA exercises their right to picket.”
The hospital system’s statement went on to say: “MultiCare believes in paying market-competitive salaries and benefits. We must also ensure our services remain affordable for patients and that our hospitals remain fiscally sound so that we can continue providing health care services to the community.”
The Nurses Association said one of the issues is that Good Samaritan nurses care for one another’s patients in order to take breaks.
“Nurses feel that this method spreads them too thin and is not in a patient’s best interest,” the news release said. “At MultiCare Tacoma General, meanwhile, nurses bargained for and won nurse-to-patient ratios in 2016 which caps the number of patients a nurse cares for, and they operate with break nurses.”
The union release also raised concerns about an approach at the hospital called team nursing.
“Team nursing, nurses explained, doubles the patient load of a registered nurse and expects much of the patient’s care to fall on ancillary staff (such as certified nursing assistants),” the news release said. “While team nursing works in some departments like outpatient rehabilitation, the nurses said, it doesn’t work for in-patient care.”
The union also has concerns about virtual nursing, in which an off-site nurse is on a screen.
“... a registered nurse based at Good Samaritan will need to sign off on the tele-nurse’s work which means that the Good Samaritan nurse’s license essentially vouches for the tele-nurse’s work,” the release said.
A registered nurse quoted in the release, Erin Butler, said: “We are already spread so thin. And when you put more and more responsibility on nurses — it puts our license and livelihood at risk.”
