Texas registered nurses today condemned a Brownsville, Texas hospital for the firings of seven highly skilled critical care nurses for challenging unsafe staffing for the facility's most vulnerable patients in the hospital's intensive care unit (ICU).

The unwarranted terminations, which deprive patients of nurses with more than 70 years of irreplaceable experience, occurred at Valley Regional Medical Center, an affiliate of Hospital Corporation of America, the largest for-profit hospital corporation in the world. The RNs are members of National Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas, the state's largest RN union and an affiliate of National Nurses United, the nation's biggest RN union and professional association.

Nurses from Valley Regional and from other Texas HCA-affiliated hospitals will conduct a picket and press conference in front of Valley Regional on Tuesday.

What: Protest picket and press conference
When: Tuesday, May 24, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Where: Valley Regional Medical Center, 100 E. Alton Gloor Blvd., Brownsville

All seven ICU nurses serve as code team nurses and four of the seven are open heart nurses. The staffing shortage in the ICU is now being filled by 13 temporary agency nurses who do not share the lost RNs' history in the facility or with the patients at the hospital.

The nurses were targeted for refusing to accept an additional assignment that in their professional judgment was unsafe and a violation of the Texas Nursing Practice Act.

Hospital management has demanded the nurses, who in the ICU provide constant care for the hospital's most severely ill patients, take on additional duties of temporary charge nurse, who make clinical assignments for patients and staff on the floor, and code team assignments, which can require them to rush to other hospital floors to assist with patients - leaving their own ICU patients and their ICU charge duties behind.

We have been asking the hospital to correct this unsafe situation for some time, with no result," said Ramiro Castillo, RN. "Because of our increasing concern for the safety of our critically ill patients, we felt we no longer had a choice but to refuse the additional duties that put our patients at risk."

"As a registered nurse, my full commitment is to my patients," said Cleo Vasquez, RN. "I have a responsibility under my license to ensure the safety of my patients. I'm disappointed with hospital leadership for not living up to these same standards--standards that they claim to hold."

"Instead of being fired, these nurses should be honored and held up as examples of true patient advocates," said Laura Dominguez, an ICU RN who works elsewhere in Brownsville and is an NNOC-Texas leader.

Additionally, the RNs blasted the cavalier attitude of the hospital's chief nursing officer for gushing in an e-mail that the threatened firings, which would exacerbate the facility staffing crisis, were "groovy."

Source:
National Nurses United