Northridge Hospital Technicians, Nurses Back at Work After Sickout

Operating-room nurses and technicians at Northridge Hospital Medical Center returned to work Tuesday after a one-day sickout, hospital officials said.

Medical center administrators said they were caught by surprise when 20 of the 68-member operating-room staff called in sick within about 30 minutes just before 5 a.m. The job action grew out of a dispute over salaries, staffing and management structure of the operating room at the Roscoe Boulevard campus, officials said.

Efforts to reach employees who participated in the sickout were unsuccessful.

The hospital’s operating-room facilities were closed to trauma patients from 5:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, but no life-or-death cases came in, and no scheduled procedures were canceled, said spokeswoman Toshia Johnson.

“We had a plan to reroute them to Holy Cross [in Mission Hills] if there had been a trauma case,” Johnson said. “Holy Cross is about 12 minutes away.”

Hospital administrators and operating-room staff had been discussing the issues for six weeks before the sickout, Roger Seaver, medical center president, said in a statement.