Mercy Fitz nurses detail deplorable conditions
“As far as the staffing goes, we’re shorter than we’ve ever been. We’re seeing additional patients with less staff. We’re putting patients in hallways. We’re seeing them in the consult rooms.
We’re putting them everywhere we can.”
— Sue Brusco, a Registered Nurse at Mercy Catholic Medical Center - Mercy Fitzgerald Campus
Unionized nurses at Mercy Fitzgerald hospital plan to information picket Oct. 27 as they say emergency room patients wait as many as 45 hours to be placed, as others are put in halls during processing because of the overload due to staffing shortages.
“I’ve been working in the ER for 15 years. This has never been this busy down there,” Sue Brusco, a Registered Nurse at Mercy Catholic Medical Center - Mercy Fitzgerald Campus, said. “As far as the staffing goes, we’re shorter than we’ve ever been. We’re seeing additional patients with less staff. We’re putting patients in hallways. We’re seeing them in the consult rooms. We’re putting them everywhere we can.”
She explained what it’s been like in the emergency room.
“It’s been very stressful this year moreso than it’s ever been,” Brusco said. “We had somebody last week, they were up to 45 hours waiting for a bed. A lot of the times, they’re going usually around high teens to 20s for hours waiting. It’s never been like this – ever.”
Attempts to reach officials at Trinity Health Tuesday were unsuccessful.
Brusco is one of approximately 280 members of the Mercy Fitzgerald Nurses’ Union, a division of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals. The nurses’ contract expired Oct. 1 and they have been working without one since then. They have been negotiating with Trinity Health since early August and while no strike has been
scheduled, union officials said if talks break down on certain issues, they might be left with no other option.
“Our hospital has never had to come to a strike before,” Annmarie Dallago, co-president of the Mercy Fitzgerald union and 34year nurse, said. “We’ve always been able to come to a deal but these are two items that our nurses will strike on - staffing and health care, if we have to. We prefer to bargain in good faith.”
Dallago said the union’s main issues are staffing and health care, as well as respect.
“They’ve always been the issues,” she said. “Since COVID happened in March, it seems to be worse. Our staffing has always been an issue but for some reason, since March, it’s getting worse, not
better.”
Dallago said administration is using the pandemic as justification for the staffing situation.
“I feel like the hospital’s been working under horrific conditions since March and the main excuse that they use is COVID,” she said. “We haven’t been in a surge so that shouldn’t be an excuse. I feel like the hospital is putting the budget over safe staffing.”
She said the company spent $18 million to hire Accenture to do a staffing analysis, which she said determined short staffing causes increased infection rates and mortality - something she said experienced nurses at Mercy Fitzgerald and widely acknowledged nursing research already stated.
“So, if staffing’s an issue, why haven’t we fixed it for months and months and months?” Dallago asked. “These patients are sitting in the ER for 17 hours at a time. We’ve been complaining and having labor meetings about it and they just have not fixed it.”
Fellow union co-president Jackie Ximines said the nurses’ immediate managers seem sympathetic to their plight. “People are very frustrated. They’re not angry, they’re frustrated,” she said.
In addition, Dallago said the shortages impact other staff as well.
“Our ancillary staff are leaving in droves since COVID because they’re overworked,” she said. “Years
ago, we had one technician for five to seven patients ... Now, we’re lucky if we have one for the whole floor of
34 patients helping these nurses. Plus the nurses are getting more patients. That hurts the patients. Besides the nurses, that hurts the patients too. It’s been pretty bad and that’s like almost in every floor in the hospital.”
Brusco shared her experiences in the Emergency Department.
“It’s been a total mess,” she said. “You have the new patients that are coming in, some of them can be very, very sick and then you have the patients who have been there waiting and they’re getting angry, they’re leaving.”
She said there used to be eight nurses on the weekend, now they’re down to seven - and that’s with 35 to
40 patients in the emergency room.
Another critical issue for the nurses is their health care coverage.
“I have nurses and other staff in the hospital come to me continuously saying that they’re afraid to go to the doctors because they can’t afford it,” Dallago said. “They get lab work and they’re getting $700 bills.”
She spoke about the potential of her members not receiving care.
“I feel that people are going to die and become sick of this because they are not paying attention to them
selves because of the costs,” Dallago said. “Being a Mercy Catholic institution, you would think that they would be compassionate and care about their own employees. We’re health care providers and we can’t even afford the health care.”
Andrew Gaffney, regional director of PASNAP, said the costs were exorbitant.
“The real problem is there is a co-insurance component which will raise costs up to $5,500 a year,” he said. “It is far greater than Crozer, Main Line, Penn, basically anyone else in the area.”
He gave the example of the costs associated with a union member having a baby. If they have a baby within the Trinity Health system, that could cost them between $3,000 to $4,000, he said.
Union officials hope they can reach consensus with the administration regarding the health care and the staffing situation.
Dallago said she wants to see agreed upon grids, which provide guidelines for staffing, and backup protocol put into the contract - all so they can care for the community in the best way possible.
“We have their best interest in mind when they come into the hospital,” she said. “We want to make sure that we can provide the best, excellent quality and safe care that we can provide for them. That’s what this fight is about.”