Brenda Pignone, a staff nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, arrives before 7 a.m. on a typical day. For 26 years, she's taken the elevator to a floor known as White 7, where most of her patients are healing after abdominal surgery. This 27-bed unit, like hundreds of others across the commonwealth, has become ground zero in a statewide debate. On Nov. 6, Massachusetts voters will decide whether the number of patients a nurse can care for should be regulated by law.
A former Nemours pediatric nurse practitioner alleges in a lawsuit she was fired from her job because her boss thought she was "too old" and he was uninterested in accommodating her disability. Joan Blair, who had worked at Nemours/A.I. duPont Hospital for Children for 28 years until April 2017, claims she experienced age, gender and disability discrimination by her then boss Dr. Harry Chugani.
Northwestern Medical Center nurses will decide Wednesday whether or not to form a union, a proposal opposed by the hospital’s administration — and some of the nurses. Two groups of nurses rallied outside the St. Albans hospital on Friday, one with signs reading “No $ for Union Busting” and “We support our nurses” and a smaller gathering about 100 feet away with signs saying “No Union” and “Our NMC Union Free.”
Karen Duffy has been a nurse caring for new mothers and babies at Brockton Hospital for more than 30 years. Sometimes, she said, she does not get to spend as much time with a patient as she wants to, or feels like she has to split her attention among too many patients. “You go home, when you’ve had too many patients, and say, ‘Did I give that med?’ ” Duffy said. “You second-guess yourself.”
The hospital industry has partnered with a major Democratic consulting firm in an unusual alliance against Massachusetts’s nurses and the bulk of its progressive infrastructure. At issue is a ballot initiative that aims to improve patient safety by limiting the number of patients that can be assigned to a single nurse.
Massachusetts has some of the best medical care in the world, but a ballot measure next month could start its erosion by raising costs and reducing access. The culprit is the Massachusetts Nurses Association. Question 1 would limit the number of patients assigned to each registered nurse in state hospitals.