Union to take firing of nurses to state

Thursday, Sept. 20, 2001 | 10:37 a.m.

Members of Nevada's largest nurses union, angered over the firing of two colleagues from Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center for refusing assignments, were expected to file formal complaints today with the state Board of Nursing against two supervisors.

The two fired nurses say the assignments compromised safety by asking them to care for too many patients at one time. Sunrise officials responded that the nurses were fired for refusing the assignments without first hearing a report from the night staff.

Two nurses on the shift heard the reports and accepted the assignments. The two other nurses, who refused to hear patient reports, were fired two days later. The union has also said the fired nurses were targeted because they gave television interviews, a claim Sunrise spokeswoman Ann Lynch called "ludicrous."

Lynch this morning declined comment on the complaint, pending the outcome of labor arbitration between the fired nurses and hospital administrators.

Nevada Service Employees Union, which represents 1,000 nurses at Sunrise and more than 4,000 nurses in Southern Nevada, has vowed to get the fired employees rehired.

The union complaint singles out Dee Hicks, Sunrise's director of nursing, and Judy Brown, a Sunrise nurse manager. Brown and Hicks violated the Nevada Nurse Practice Act with their "unprofessional conduct" and by failing to maintain proper staffing levels, Maryanne Dawicki, spokeswoman for the union, said today.

The incident unfolded July 15, when four nurses challenged their assignments in a cardiac care unit on the grounds that there were too many patients assigned to each nurse.

Brown, the unit manager, "failed to help her fellow nurses meet patient needs," according to the union's complaint.

Nevada has the nation's worst nurse-to-patient ratio, according to a federal report. Some nurses have alleged that hospitals use the nationwide nursing shortage as an excuse to understaff, forcing employees to take on potentially dangerous workloads.