Nurses
from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center provided their first-hand accounts of
patient safety violations taking place throughout the County and
illustrated how systemic short-staffing hinders nurses’ ability to
deliver quality care.
“In the ER, our patient load is unknown. Anything can come in through our doors”, said Arcelia Lopez, RN at Harbor UCLA’s Emergency Room.
“We need more staff, yet per diem nurses are getting cancelled leaving
us short staffed. Everyday we’re short one or two nurses.”
Throughout RN contract negotiations, we have presented solutions
to improve healthcare delivery, to keep L.A. County healthy and manage
our costs. Yet County management has been resistant to giving serious
consideration to our ideas.
Next steps:
Our fight to put patients first is not over. As our RN bargaining team returns to negotiations we will be calling on nurses at the worksite to support our actions for patient safety and RN professional concerns. For more information please contact Katarina del Valle Thompson at (213) 738-8420 or email katarina.thompson@seiu721.org.