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Patient Dies During Lockout in CA Nurses’ Strike

 |  By cclark@healthleadersmedia.com  
   September 26, 2011

A one-day strike involving more than 23,000 nurses at 30 California hospitals has  turned ugly with labor groups blaming the Saturday death of a cancer patient on a mistake made by a strike replacement nurse on Friday.

The hospital's regular nurses tried to return but were locked out.

The California Nurses Association said in a statement Sunday that hospital officials attributed the patient's death, which occurred early Saturday morning at Sutter Health's Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, on "a medical error made while (the patient) was under the care of a replacement nurse."

The nurse was said to have come to the hospital from another state to work during the one-day strike on Thursday, which subsequently turned into a five-day lock-out that kept the regular oncology and other nurses from returning to work on Friday, the CNA said. The CNA has asked the state Department of Public Health to investigate the incident, as well as general care policies at all Sutter hospitals.

The CNA statement quoted from an article in the Contra Costa Times, which said the out-of-state nurse committed the error "while administering a dosage of medication to a cancer patient, leading to her death early Saturday morning."

Hospitals reportedly told the CNA they imposed the lockout because they had to sign longer term contracts with nurse replacement registries.

In an unusual statement late Sunday, the California Hospital Association, which represents 450 healthcare facilities in the state, sharply criticized the CNA for using "a tragic medical error involving a nurse that resulted in the death of a patient" to further its cause.

"It is inappropriate and irresponsible for the California Nurses Association labor union to exploit this tragedy to further their union agenda," said a CHA statement from President and CEO, Duane Dauner. "This is the same union that has taken nurses away from patient bedsides more than 100 times during the past three years. It also is unfortunate that the nurses union is questioning the qualifications of other nurses providing patient care."

The statement from the California Nurses Association said the labor action was called to protest "demands by Sutter executives for some 200 contract concessions, a number of which would erode the ability of nurses to advocate for safer patient care, especially on the critical issue of safe staffing."

That a patient may have died as a result of nurses being locked out, "is chilling and strikes right to our nurses' concern about their ability to advocate for their patients," the statement says CNA/National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro told a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle. "It was irresponsible to lock out those nurses," DeMoro said.

After the one-day strike by 23,000 nurses at Sutter Health, Children's Hospital Oakland, and Kaiser hospitals, registered nurses tried to come back to work on Friday but "were instead barred from the hospital by hospital officials and armed security guards," according to the CNA statement. "At least one experienced, veteran oncology nurse who tried to report to work Friday was among those turned away at Summit."

As further evidence to make their case that Sutter allowed quality of care to lapse, the CNA statement said that on Friday, a registered nurse at Alta Bates Summit "returned to work after an urgent notification from the hospital to CNA that it needed a nurse it had locked out who has specialized competency and expertise in caring for patients in need of complex procedures such as dialysis and pheresis."

The CNA is further questioning whether hospitals that call in replacement personnel assure their qualifications for the jobs they're assigned to perform, and are asking the California board of Registered Nursing to look into the licenses of the "strikebreaking nurses and the nurse supervisors" who worked during the strike and lockout.

"Failure to guarantee clinical competencies and not assuring proper certifications violate California law, and put patients at risk," said CNA Legislative Director Bonnie Castillo, RN.

In the California Hospital Association statement, Dauner said that when nurses call a strike, "hospitals cannot simply send their patients home and close the doors. Patients still need care, 24-hours a day, seven days a week. The only option is for hospitals to hire temporary replacement nurses. The nurses union knows that hospitals must hire these temporary workers when they make permanent nurses walk picket lines.

"If the union believes the use of licensed replacement nurses is a threat to public safety, then why have they chosen to pursue a pattern of waging strikes on a routine basis?" Dauner asked.

He ended the statement saying that while the CHA "deeply regrets that this tragic situation occurred," he noted that "in many cases, full-time nurses in Northern California hospitals earn more than $150,000 per year."

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