A month after UVM Health Network gave its Burlington nurses immediate raises or bonuses, the clinical staff at the network’s second-largest hospital are gearing for a fight of their own.
Nurses and support staff at Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital in upstate New York plan to protest on hospital grounds Tuesday.
The Plattsburgh hospital employees have been working without a contract for the past two years, according to Kristi Barnes, spokesperson for the New York State Nurses Association, the union behind the protest. The nearly 600-employee group is asking for raises and benefits. It’s also asking management for safer staffing levels amid what they say are dangerous shortages.
In a written statement Monday, Michelle LeBeau, the hospital’s president, acknowledged the “chronic and industry-wide workforce shortage” affecting the hospital but stressed the union and management would have to “pave a sustainable path forward.”
“Our goal remains to create a collective bargaining agreement that values all of our employees, recognizes the realities of today’s health care industry and supports a strong path forward for our organization,” said LeBeau, who is also president of another UVM Health Network affiliate, Alice Hyde Medical Center in Malone, New York.
Heather Cartee, an emergency room charge nurse and a union member, said the lack of staff at the hospital is putting patients at risk. Cartee is supposed to manage the nurses’ unit at the ER, but she spends her shifts seeing more patients than she can care for. At times, she’s had to clean and decontaminate rooms because there are not enough people on the housekeeping staff. Many of her colleagues on an average shift are temporary contractors who need more hand-holding than a full-time nurse, she said.
“It’s not safe,” she said. “I can’t even see my own patients. Patients aren’t even getting vitals. They’re not getting medications. Delaying any of that care is a horrible risk to the lives of our community members.”
Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital, the largest employer in New York’s North Country, has been part of the UVM Health Network since 2013. It has more than 300 licensed beds and is the health network’s largest hospital outside of Vermont.
The Plattsburgh hospital is just a ferry ride away from the medical center in Burlington, and the two hospitals share clinical staff.
The protest in Plattsburgh comes as medical residents at the University of Vermont Medical Center have formed a union to address similar wage and patient safety concerns.
Members of the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, which also has a union chapter representing 2,600 UVM Medical Center employees, expressed serious concerns in the past about staffing, and last month, management approved immediate pay raises for most members of the nurses union.
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