Dozens picket hospital’s use of ‘traveling nurses’
01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, July 14, 2007
Dozens of union members picketed outside Women & Infants Hospital yesterday to protest the hiring of three “traveling nurses” to fill empty shifts in the neonatal intensive-care unit.
The traveling nurses work for an agency that provides temporary nurses to hospitals. The hospital hired the three nurses for 12 weeks starting June 18, but so far only one was needed to fill a single, 12-hour shift in the neonatal intensive-care unit, according to Paula Gillette, senior vice president for patient-care services. Otherwise they have been standing by, working administrative duties.
Gillette said that the hospital did not have serious staffing problems, but she feared that some shifts would be hard to fill in the NICU. She said she hired the travelers to make sure there would be no mandatory overtime.
But Wendy Laprade, a labor-room nurse and union leader, said the hospital had avoided hiring travelers until now, and the decision hit a nerve. “The only time there were travelers in this building was when they were scabs,” she said, recalling the bitter contract dispute in the winter of 1998-99. In that dispute, the union staged a one-day walkout, the hospital refused to let them return for 29 more days, and traveling nurses were brought into to replace them.
“Would you want to be cared for by a nurse with one foot out the door?” The union represents about 1,700 hospital employees, including 700 nurses.
“This is about them making bad choices for the patients at Women & Infants,” Laprade said. “We’ve got a commitment to the community and to our patients.”
Laprade said that by staffing with travelers instead of mandatory overtime, “they’re replacing one bad thing with another.... We truly, honest-to-God believe that it’s bad for patients.” The hospital, instead, should hire enough nurses to fill every shift, she said.
Gillette acknowledged that nurses who’ve devoted their careers to Women & Infants have a deeper commitment to the hospital than a temporary worker. But the travelers, she said, are carefully selected. “We only accept people who are highly qualified and skilled.”
The protest comes as the hospital and the union begin to negotiate a contract; the current one will expire in November. One bargaining session has been held. The union is working with a new team at the hospital, which has recently hired a new chief operating officer and human-resources director. Gillette is also new, having started April 1 to replace Mary Dowd Struck, who retired.
The summer is a difficult time for staffing at Women & Infants because births increase at the same time that staffers want vacations.
Under a new agreement with the union, the hospital offers incentives for nurses to volunteer for overtime, to avoid mandating people to work extra shifts. The program has worked well, but Gillette still feared staff shortages in the NICU, she said. Gillette said she exhausted every other alternative before turning to the travelers.ravelers.
“We think they’re testing the water with it,” Laprade said. “We want them to know it’s not going to fly.”
Said Gillette, “The challenge is coming up with a plan that satisfies universally everyone.”
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