The Business of Health Care Gets the Blame for Nursing Crisis

The business of health care, in which the bottom line takes precedence over patient care, has created a crisis in the staffing of nurses at hospitals.

It is a global problem but one the nurses at St. John’s hospitals in Ventura County have organized to combat.

Charles Padilla, chief operating officer and administrator of St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard and St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo, has suggested that nurses attribute the staffing problems to a lack of attention by management (“Shortage of Nurses Is a National Problem,” Ventura County Perspective, Feb. 4). This is not the case.

We do feel, however, that hospital management teams owe it to the communities they serve to be proactive in dealing with the crisis.

It’s not enough to just increase wages or give financial assistance to nursing programs or to step up recruiting programs. These things are important, but the one true way to encourage nurses back to bedside care is to make the job attractive.

Ask any nurse you know and he or she probably will tell you that one does not go into this field to get rich. Rather, nurses are attracted to a workplace that gives them the resources to do their job as they have been trained to, where their opinions and solutions regarding patient care are respected, valued and wanted.

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Padilla writes that at St. John’s, staffing is determined by “what we call expected volumes.” The “we” is management, and this pinpoints the problem. Nurses--the front-line caregivers, the backbone of the hospital--are not involved in determining these numbers, or in many other patient care decisions.

Padilla also says that “patient care has not been and will not be compromised” and that “we respond quickly” to events that change staffing needs. As the public has heard, nurses and doctors at St. John’s disagree with him. Whom do you believe? Who wants to work in a place where your professional opinion doesn’t matter?

The blame for this crisis is passed on--to government, to health insurance companies, to increasing labor and supply costs . . . . Let’s move on from placing blame and let’s fix the problem.

Until now, no one has been willing to stand up for patients. The nurses at St. John’s have organized to create a unified voice in the interest of patient care. We don’t pretend to have all the answers, but our efforts are working.

Recently contract negotiators tentatively agreed on an article that would create a team of managers and bedside nurses to address staffing concerns. This exists at few other hospitals. We believe that this team will give nurses true input into decision-making that affects the care we give and that it will improve working conditions.

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This is how we are attacking the health care crisis. I hope all nurses and the community will join us as we begin with management locally and move forward to improve health care globally.

St. John’s and this community are lucky to have such committed nurses.