About two dozen University of Vermont Medical Center nurses and imaging technicians gathered outside the hospital Wednesday to voice concerns about staff recruitment, retention and pay, just hours before techs were scheduled to sit down with the hospital for their third round of union negotiations.
Nurses and techs, clad in red, stood in front of hundreds of crayon-hued pinwheels near the hospital’s main entrance. Each pinwheel represented an unfilled nursing or imaging job.
“I feel weary,” said Rachel Foxx, a nurse in the hospital’s Mother-Baby unit. “We’ve worked short-staffed before, but never like this.”
Foxx would normally work 36 hours each week, but lately she said she’s been working 48 or more, and still gets requests to work on days off.
There has been a nursing shortage for years in the United States, and the pandemic only highlighted that problem at many hospitals.
Peg Gagne, UVM’s chief nursing officer, told VTDigger the hospital has 180 unfilled nursing positions and 90 open technician jobs, as of this week. The hospital has hired about 250 traveling nurses to make up for some of that need, but it doesn’t fill the staffing gap entirely.
Several nurses who spoke at the gathering expressed frustration that traveling nurses, hired from agencies, are paid so much more than those employed by the hospital directly.
Some traveling nurses are paid four times as much as UVMMC nurses, according to a press release from the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals.
Foxx said she’s concerned that health insurance premiums rise “exponentially,” while her wages only increase cents per hour each year.
She said the hospital did “the right thing” this summer by offering double base pay when employees pick up extra shifts. But she also asked why the hospital would invest in overtime instead of just raising its regular wages and hiring more staff.
Sharon Schroeder, a UVMMC nurse in the Mother-Baby unit, said pay gaps and staff shortages create “generational problems.” Early-career nurses start at UVMMC, get a couple years of training and quickly leave for a lucrative travel gig, sometimes to pay off their student loans, she said.
The hospital needs to start “thinking creatively about recruiting and retaining people,” Schroeder said. “We are talking about compensation and the cost of living. But we’re also talking about student loan forgiveness.”
Michael Bernier, an MRI technologist and the techs’ bargaining co-lead, said when he sat down for negotiations later on Wednesday, he would be asking for higher pay and more consistent scheduling.
Bernier said the hospital “continues to lowball our CT and imaging technologists at the bargaining table.”
The imaging department is short eight radiologists and several more CT technicians to meet rising demand, Stephen M. Leffler, president of the medical center, said Monday. He said these vacancies have caused a two-to-six-week wait-time for MRI and CAT scans.
Toward the end of the employee gathering, a passing driver yelled out, “Go nurses!” A few attendees pumped their fists in response.
Liora Engel-Smith contributed to this story.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Michael Bernier’s title.
