Ten Saint Charles Nurses filed unsafe staffing complaints against the hospital system for allegedly failing to meet safe staffing levels. Nurses submitted complaints on May 5 claiming St. Charles failed to meet minimum staffing standards, didn’t direct patients elsewhere when the hospital operated over capacity and hadn’t corrected staffing law violations found in a 2022 investigation by the Oregon Health Authority.
“St. Charles’ executives spent years raking in profits and looking the other way while frontline nurses and staff left the hospital. Now St. Charles is short-staffed nearly every shift and we’re concerned for our patients. We need to act now to recruit and retain skilled nurses so our community gets the care they deserve,” said John Nangle, a local nurse and Oregon Nurses Association executive team member at St. Charles Bend, in a press release.
The ONA said the unsafe staffing levels are a direct consequence of the hospital’s inability to recruit and retain employees. ONA claimed nearly 60% of registered nurses have resigned since 2018 and that there are over 300 vacant nursing positions. The hospital system countered these claims, saying the turnover rate for the past three years is closer to 15% and there are currently 84 nursing positions it’s seeking to fill.
The complaint comes five months into a contentious bargaining process after the nurses’ previous contract expired on Dec. 31, 2022. In April St. Charles nurses filed two unfair labor practice charges against the hospital system with the National Labor Relations Board, saying St. Charles bargained in bad faith when it refused to divulge information ONA said was relevant to the bargaining process. Earlier that month nurses said St. Charles spied on employees participating in union activity in a separate complaint to the NLRB.
“As always, St. Charles takes patient safety seriously, and we strive to provide the highest quality care at all times,” said Julie Ostrom, a senior nursing leader and member of the St. Charles bargaining team, in a written statement responding to ONA’s claims. “It is our understanding that the NLRB is in the initial phases of investigation. We are back in negotiations with the ONA this week and will continue to bargain in good faith with the goal of reaching a contract agreement.”
St. Charles last bargained with nurses in the summer of 2018, and it took nearly seven months for a contract to be reached. In a statement in January 2019, ONA said the contract nurses currently work under included improvements to language addressing staffing, economics and shared governance.
This article appears in Source Weekly May 11, 2023.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
