Workers at Camarillo Protest Understaffing

Workers who feed, bathe and dress mentally ill and retarded patients at Camarillo State Hospital are protesting what they describe as understaffing at the hospital.

In a demonstration last week that drew more than 100 protesters, psychiatric technicians said that they risk injury to themselves and to patients when staffing drops to low levels.

“There’s a risk that clients can be injured because you can’t watch them carefully enough,” said Gale Flores, president of the local California Assn. of Psychiatric Technicians chapter, which represents 780 workers at Camarillo State Hospital. Because of understaffing, workers are often forced to work overtime, Flores said.

The protest was one of six demonstrations against understaffing at state hospitals that treat developmentally disabled patients. Camarillo State Hospital houses about 1,180 patients, including 600 mentally ill and 580 developmentally disabled patients.

Administrators at Camarillo are not to blame for deficiencies in staffing, Flores said, adding that the cause is insufficient funding resulting from recent budget cuts made by Gov. George Deukmejian.

Among the state’s developmental centers, Camarillo actually received the highest allocation from the state Department of Developmental Services, roughly $92 million for this year alone, according to figures released by the state. The system includes centers in Costa Mesa, Pomona, Porterville, San Jose and Sonoma.

Camarillo is the only such hospital which also treats mentally ill patients.

Staffing levels are reviewed and adjusted according to numbers of patients, but there are times when staff vacancies run high, a spokesman for the state’s system of developmental centers said Tuesday. Hospitals are required to see there is at least one person assigned to every eight patients.

“So far, the staffing standards have worked quite well,” said Don Bowling, chief of clinical services, which manages seven developmental centers in the state. Fewer positions were filled than allocated last year due to high staff attrition and retirements, he added. Officials hope to fill more positions this year with new trainees, reducing the number of vacancies at state developmental centers, he said.

Psychiatric technicians are not the only workers who come in daily contact with patients at Camarillo State Hospital, a spokeswoman said.

Each unit at Camarillo is bolstered by teachers, social workers, psychologists, rehabilitation and music therapists and nurses, said Maria Tejada, an executive assistant at the hospital.

The hospital also runs a training program to keep ready a corps of psychiatric technicians in case vacancies occur, Tejada said.

Staffing ratios fail to consider the minor emergencies that happen daily, Flores said. Workers are often pulled away to transport or bathe a patient, leaving other staffers with more than their share, she said.

Camarillo State Hospital has not seen the accidents reported at other developmental centers, Flores admitted, but workers fear that chronic understaffing could lead to trouble.

“With the type of clients we have, they can be explosive at any time,” she said.

In a move to evaluate staffing at state hospitals, lawmakers are attempting to pass legislation that would authorize the first study of staffing in 20 years.

State Sen. Dan McCorquodale (D-San Jose) said he has co-authored a bill which would authorize a new study of staffing at state hospitals.

The study would look into charges by workers who say they have overwhelming numbers of patients in their wards, McCorquodale said.

At a series of 15 legislative hearings held last October, psychiatric technicians across the state blamed understaffing as the cause of accidents with patients, said McCorquodale, co-chairman of the committee looking into patient care at the state hospitals.

“We were really amazed at the number of times that it gets down to one or two people where there were 10 to 15 patients,” McCorquodale said in a telephone interview. “We had been under the impression all along that staffing levels were adequate. As we got to looking at it, we found a number of cases where, when there was a person hurt, there was only one person on the ward.”

A spokesman for the Sacramento-based union which represents psychiatric technicians said a new study may end the criticism its members face whenever there are allegations of patient abuse.

“People have been continually arguing whether there is enough staff or not enough,” said Keith Hearn, a spokesman for the 5,000-member California Assn. of Psychiatric Technicians.

“Over the years we’ve seen more and more of our people come under criticism for not providing adequate care and treatment. We attribute a lot of this to the fact that there isn’t enough staff to provide the treatment and daily care that is required,” he said.