Union criticizes firing of nurses

Tuesday, July 24, 2001 | 10:12 a.m.

Union leaders say that hospital officials who ask nurses to care for too many patients risk not only the safety of the patients but their own careers as well.

The comments came after two nurses were fired from Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center two days after they refused to take assignments they said would have compromised patient safety.

Members of the Service Employees International Union, which represents the fired nurses, held a news conference Monday to criticize the hospital's actions and demand the nurses be rehired.

"Sunrise Hospital expects these nurses to do more with less," said Thomas M. Beatty, executive director of SEIU Local 1107 in Las Vegas. "Hospital administrators will put patient needs second to profits. We need to put the care-givers, such as the nurses, back in charge."

Sunrise spokeswoman Ann Lynch said the nurses were fired because they refused the assignment without hearing about the patients' conditions from the night staff.

"All they heard is that they would each have an extra patient, and they left," Lynch said.

The incident occurred July 18, when one of six nurses scheduled to work in a cardiac care unit called in sick. The unit, which was full, had 36 patients. That meant each of the other nurses would have an additional patient to care for and raised each nurse's caseload to seven.

The nurses told hospital administrators that several of the patients that day were more ill than is normal for patients in that unit, and they required added individualized care, said Christy Sawyer, spokeswoman for the union.

"Nurses have an obligation to their patients to challenge unsafe assignments," Sawyer said. "The American Nurses Association has taken the position that nurses have a professional obligation to refuse assignments that put their licenses or patients in jeopardy."

It was the nurses' actions -- not the hospital's -- that threatened patient safety, Lynch said.

The night shift, which had already been on duty for 12 hours, had to stay on an additional three to four hours to care for the patients when the nurses refused the assignment, Lynch said.

"Such conduct cannot be defended as being in the best interests of our patients, and we simply cannot tolerate it at our hospital," Lynch said.

Two other nurses on the unit that day initially refused the assignment, but they agreed to work after hearing the patient reports, Lynch said.

Lynch also took issue with turnover statistics for Sunrise cited by union officials.

Deb LaFave, the union's chief steward at Sunrise, said the nurse turnover rate at Sunrise is 25 percent, compared with 12.6 percent statewide and 16 percent nationwide.

Lynch said the union was using raw data provided by the hospital that hadn't been adjusted for re-hires or new hires, and that Sunrise's turnover rate for nurses is 12 percent.

A nurse at University Medical Center, which is also represented by the SEIU, said there have been situations in which nurses felt they were being asked to care for too many patients at once and, as a result, asked for additional staff.

Vicki Huber, senior associate for patient services at UMC, said nurses are expected to work in conjunction with management to solve concerns about patient loads. No UMC nurses have refused to accept assignments, Huber said.