Nurses’ Continuing Protest Disrupts Care

For the second day, registered nurses at Los Angeles County-run hospitals protesting pay and working conditions staged sickouts that disrupted surgery, obstetrical care, pediatrics and emergency room treatment.

Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital in South Los Angeles continued to be the hardest hit by the work stoppage. No permanent staff nurses reported to work in the hospital’s emergency room, pediatric division, gynecology department or critical care unit, according to Abby Haight, a spokeswoman for the nurses at Service Employees International Union Local 660. In one ward, she said there was only one nurse to tend 30 patients.

At Harbor General-UCLA Hospital in Torrance, no permanent staff nurses reported for work in the neonatal and pediatric intensive care units, the baby nursery and the obstetrical postpartum delivery unit, Haight said.

In both hospitals, county health services spokeswoman Toby Staheli said, “There was a reshuffling of staff to ensure coverage.” Administrative personnel were recruited to do nursing duty. For the second day, elective surgery was canceled, ambulances were diverted to other hospitals and many patients were either transferred or discharged.

At Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, which escaped the sickout Thursday, absenteeism on Friday was mainly confined to the Women’s Hospital. Obstetrical care there was disrupted on the two days by more than a 50% no-show rate among staff nurses. One nurse who worked the evening shift on Thursday said a single nurse had to monitor as many as eight high-risk patients in labor at one time. The normal staffing level is one nurse to four high-risk patients. Nurse absenteeism also forced cancellation of all elective surgery at Women’s Hospital.

Haight, at Local 660, said that the work stoppage planned Thursday at County-USC was canceled because of the earthquake, which put additional stress on the hospital.

Asked whether patients are suffering because of the work action, Haight said, “No, I don’t believe so.”

Then she added, “They suffer every day because of understaffing.”

The county’s contract with nurses represented by SEIU Local 660 expired at midnight Wednesday. Negotiations have continued for months and although a tentative agreement on fringe benefits has been reached, both sides say they remain far apart on wages and the nurses’ demand for increased staffing.

According to Katarina Davis, a SEIU negotiator, the county is offering registered nurses an 11% raise over two years while the union is seeking a 32.5% increase. Salaries now range from $24,936 to $29,412 annually.

Several categories of nurses are included in the county work force and most of them--nursing attendants, ward clerks, licensed vocational nurses and administrative nurses--are not participating in the job action. Many have been filling in for the staff registered nurses and nurse anesthetists who are part of the work action; some however, have stayed off the job in sympathy.

Exactly how many nurses failed to report to work Friday morning was not clear because union and county officials reported different figures.

County Department of Health Services spokeswoman Staheli said that 61% of the 132 registered staff nurses and nurse anesthetists who were scheduled to work Friday morning at King failed to show. But at Local 660, Haight said that about 75% were absent.

Both county and union officials agreed that about 32% of the 183 nurses at Harbor-UCLA failed to show for work Friday--similar to the number who stayed out Thursday.

Terry Fernandez, a staff nurse at Harbor-UCLA’s neonatal intensive care unit who did not report to work Friday, said nurses she contacted at the hospital described the situation as “chaos.” She said most of the infants in intensive care--some of them weighing little more than a pound--have been transferred to other nearby hospitals.