Nurses are Fed Up

Recently, eight nurses who were terminated from Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts filed a lawsuit for wrongful termination claiming the hospital retaliated against them for reporting unsafe conditions.  According to an article in MedPages Today, there have been over 600 official reports filed by nurses over the last six months regarding staffing shortages in this hospital.  Nurses are frustrated that sometimes there are only four nurses to handle 150 patients who are treated in the emergency room on one shift.  Patients are being left in urine and feces because they don’t have enough staff to clean them up.  One nurse was terminated for theft after receiving a suture for a lacerated finger which allowed her to continue to work and was terminated for using her cell phone.  A nurse was terminated for patient abandonment when she refused to take a fifth patient in a cardiac step-down unit.  

This hospital is a union yet these things are still happening to the point where there were a number of complaints against this hospital.  The nurses are suing for retaliation of reporting unsafe conditions.  It is sad that these nurses were terminated just for doing their jobs, speaking up about the conditions and being patient advocates.  

Studies have shown that when the patient outcomes are affected by the staff’s well-being when the staff is experiencing dissatisfaction or problems at home, patient outcomes are significantly affected.  I appreciate these nurses speaking up and trying to do the right thing to advocate for their patients.  It is unfortunate that it had to reach this point of a lawsuit to get the hospital to listen.