Home › News › Local News
Nurses protest staffing at hospital
Dana Rene Bowler / Star staff Nurses were among the more than 100 people who formed an informational picket Tuesday at St. John's Medical Center in Oxnard.
Dana Rene Bowler / Star staff Oxnard 07/01/08 John Welborn, Radiologist for St. John's Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, holds up signs in support for the nurses contract Tuesday afternoon. "My wife Joan Welborn has worked for St. John's for 30 years as a nurse. I am out here for her and for all the nurses at this hospital," Welborn said. Dana Rene Bowler / Star staff
STORY TOOLS 
More from Local NewsMore than 100 nurses and supporters in purple T-shirts holding yellow signs filled the sidewalk Tuesday afternoon in front of St. John's Medical Center in Oxnard.
Nurses held signs that read "Safe staffing = Safe patient care" and "CHW Nurses Demand Safe Patient Care."
It was the first of two protests in the midst of a contract dispute between the Service Employees International Union Nurse Alliance Local 121 and Catholic Healthcare West management, which operates St. John's hospitals in Camarillo and Oxnard, as well as Northridge Hospital Medical Center. Contract negotiations began in February.
Chris Slane, union representative for the Camarillo and Oxnard hospitals, said the picket was informational and not a work stoppage. The emergency room nurse, who is on a temporary leave of absence, said union nurses at the hospitals have been working without a contract since mid-June. The nurses' biggest concerns are staffing, unsafe floating practices (stationing nurses where they're not trained to work) and depletion of support staff, he said.
He noted that state law sets the ratio of nurses to patients for hospitals, with different departments requiring more nurses than others.
"For medical/surgical, it's five patients to every nurse; in telemetry, it's four to every one nurse; for ICU, it's two to one," he said.
Hospital administrators were not available for comment.
However, in a prepared statement, they said the union's demands "would threaten our ability to continue our healing ministry." The statement also said the hospitals "will maintain safe and effective staffing levels" during the dispute.
At the picket line, nurses complained that the hospital is not following state standards. Some of the nurses said staffing disparities have affected their ability to provide quality patient care.
Debra Cardoza, a registered nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit, has worked at St. John's in Oxnard for 12 years. She said that lately, the lack of sufficient staffing has caused her to work through her lunch breaks.
Nurses on the picket line said they were also disappointed that they were only offered a 2 percent wage increase.
"They've rejected all our proposals, and they have rejected every one of them without any real discussion on any of them," Slane said.
The administrators' statement said the hospital values the "contributions, loyalty and success of our registered nurses" and is committed to granting them fair compensation and benefits.
Slane said the union's bargaining team of 15 nurses will meet with a five-member management team representing Catholic Healthcare West on Thursday and again July 11.
The union will picket Northridge Hospital Medical Center today from 3 to 6 p.m.
"I hope our staffing doesn't get cut. We have critically sick babies we need to tend to," Cardoza said.
"It's important for the community to know that these nurses like working at this hospital. Some of them have been here 10, 20, 35 years. We want to keep these nurses here. But with the current conditions, we might lose some of them," Slane said.
Posted by belardom on July 2, 2008 at 4:20 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Give the nurses whatever it is they want, they do a hellava service to those most in need, the ill.
Posted by BigJake on July 2, 2008 at 9:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)
And St. Johns was offered a proposal to recruit 75-U.S. licensed, foreign educated nurses 2.5 years ago and they ignored it. Those nurses would be pulling shifts today and relieving this challenge.
More money in wages is not going to cure the nursing shortage. We are simply not putting enough students into the pipeline. Every study shows that full staffing of nurses leads to improved patient survivability. In addition to improved patient care, each nursing position that they fill by hiring from a staffing agency costs $110,000.00 to 175,000.00/year to fill annually. A U.S. licensed, foreign educated nurse would cost St. John’s $18,000.00 each tops.
Xenophobia trumps patient care standards.
Posted by tamiparker on July 2, 2008 at 11:52 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Every hospital is having this problem. The ratio's are not fair for administration. I have been a nurse for many years. Today's nurses are getting to be lazy. Part of the new generation expecting things to be given to them. 4 to 1 ratio on tele is absurd. The nurses forget to mention that they also have someone watching the monitors for them, someone else drawing the blood, someone else running all the diagnostic test and also another person helping them with making phone calls and entering orders. In some hospitals they even have CNA's taking their vitals and bathing the patients. I do agree their needs to be some sort of ratio. But nurses are here to work not sit on their butt.
Posted by VCNative on July 3, 2008 at 8 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Nurse ratios are there to protect the patients. In the past the hospitals kept the ratio really high (patient to nurse) so they could save on labor cost. The typically med sug ratio at County was 8-10 to 1 before the law was put into place. No nurse can take of 10 patients effectively. And County doesn't have very many CNA so the RNs were doing all the work, hence they had a high turn over rate. If you think nurses are lazy go visit County's ER, L&D, Meg Sug floors. They can't find enough nurses to fill the positions and the ones who are working as frequently asked to work overtime/weekends. And now since the County took over Santa Paula, they are borrowing nurses from their main facility in Ventura to fill those shifts.
Posted by coastalslinger on July 3, 2008 at 8:25 a.m. (Suggest removal)
tamiparker.....that's the problem. I know that the ICU, and CCU units of St. John's no longer have people "watching" the monitors for them anymore. That posisition, last I heard, had been fazed out.
I worked in CCU for 5 years, as a Monitor Tech and Unit Clerk, and know first-hand how the nurses are VERY understaffed.
There was NO laziness in the Units. They all worked twice as hard, and had twice the burden from understaffing. Because they cared so much for their patients, the ability not to be able to care for them in the manner they should have been cared for was overwhelming.
Nurses work 12 hour shifts. Many would not leave for 2 hours after their shift ended because of the paperwork that needed to be done. They had a choice...ignore the paperwork, or care for the patient.
These people are heroes to me. I saw first hand how they cared for people who were placed in their care. And the relatives , and friends of the patients were thankful they had such caring people.
Lazy? I think not. No... I KNOW not.
Posted by bminob on July 3, 2008 at 9:26 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Track the dollars my friends. I am sure there are people within this organization that don't amount to donkey squat and are overpaid. I am sure these nurses deserve a heck of alot more then they are being paid for.
Posted by BigJake on July 3, 2008 at 10:57 a.m. (Suggest removal)
If I could wave my magic wand and double nurse salaries, the nursing shortage would not be relieved. This is because it takes years to train a nurse. This is not driving a truck; increasing wages will not develop more nurses over night.
Even if we doubled wages for nurses, the nursing programs do not have the capacity to train the nurses that we need. We need major funding to increase capacity in our nursing colleges so that every qualified student that wants to enter nursing can be admitted.
An example, nursing schools have 8 qualified applicants for each student position that they have. This means that 7 qualified applicants cannot enter a nurse education program.
Increased wages are not going to cure this lack of infrastructure problem.
Posted by Canyouclarify on July 4, 2008 at 9:45 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The nursing shortage, increased costs for healthcare (this includes highly inflated prices for drugs, lab work, supplies, equipment, and mismanagement of money and where it is appropriated within a health system are all components of the problem.
Tammi Parker- I don't know who you are, but your pedantic comments about nurses being lazy is a bit off the mark and really does nothing to add to a constructive discussion about the issues being faced by patients and health care providers today.
Most ICU RN's and doctors will tell you that todays Telemetry patients would have been on ICU (critical care units) 10-15 years ago and the patients now in ICU would have probably been dead 10-15 years.
Patients come from the general population and as we all know America is not getting any skinnier. Having to care for 3 or 4 patients who may weigh up or more than 300 lbs..400lbs, and up is a bit daunting. Every patient deserves the best care and it's not just nursing staff who do that work. Keep in mind also that patients have 3 to 5 doctors now who are all writing orders and need information from us nurses, which also takes time away from patients.
Pay rates are a component of satisfaction, but we also want enough support staff to help patients. I would rather be researching my patients condition and understanding how to meet their needs than doing a job that a nurses aid or unit clerk can do. They have their professional duties and we have ours.
There is no easy fix for the issues facing healthcare.
The demands we are making to CHW and St.JOhns mgmt are very reasonable and will do a great deal to improve patient care. We are asking for more nurses aids, monitor techs, transporters so the basic needs of our patients can be met.
I am on the bargaining team representing the nurses and we ask our community that we take care of to support us in our struggle for safe working environment and a safe hospital environment for patients.
(Requires free registration.)
Article discussions on this site are to support community debates of issues related to our stories and editorials.
Discussions should not stray from the subject of the story or editorial.
We do not allow the following:
We reserve the right to delete threads and/or ban users for these or other reasons we deem necessary.
Opinions are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.