East Bay Nurses Continue Second Day of Strike to Protest Ebola Preparedness, Staffing Issues

Nurses working at Kaiser Permanente medical centers in the Bay Area continued to strike today after walking off the job Tuesday to protest what they said are inadequate staffing levels and a lack of preparation and training to treat patients with Ebola.

The strike and rally today in front of Kaiser’s regional headquarters in Oakland joined other rallies by nurses at facilities across the state and country, according to the California Nurses Association. The nurses plan to return to work Thursday morning and Kaiser medical centers remain open during the strike. The protesters marched this morning from the Ordway Building at 1 Kaiser Plaza to the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building at 1301 Clay St.

A statement from the California Nurses Association listed similar strikes at 33 facilities in California from San Diego to Sacramento. Nurses at the rally in Oakland said already low staffing levels are preventing them from adequately caring for their patients and a potential outbreak of Ebola in the U.S. highlights the challenges and risks they face in properly treating patients. Deborah Raymond, a registered nurse and senior vice president and area manager of Kaiser Permanente, said Tuesday that management responded to the nurses’ proposals and is waiting for the union to respond.

“We’re a little perplexed” as to why the nurses are striking, Raymond said. She said talks centered on “operational issues” and not pay or benefits. Representatives from Kaiser Permanente’s management team did not immediately return a request for comment today.

Antioch registered nurse Honesto Lucero said the examples of two nurses who contracted Ebola after caring for a patient in Dallas should be a lesson for Kaiser management about the need for more robust training. Nurses Amber Vinson and Nina Pham were both declared free of the disease in October after undergoing treatment when they contracted Ebola while caring for a patient at a Dallas facility.

“The Dallas Ebola patients, it didn’t help them. They weren’t ready,” Lucero said of the nurses. “(Management) should’ve learned from what happened in Dallas, so that’s what we’re trying to prevent here. It’s about safety, not only for us but for our patients too.” California Nurses Association president Zenei Triunfo-Cortez said they are asking for adequate “hands-on” training and “optimal equipment” in case they have to treat a patient with Ebola.

“That means interactive training and practice putting the suits on and off, not just videos or a presentation by some educator,” Triunfo-Cortez said. “We want optimal equipment and we want to make sure the patients we are taking care of have a place to go like a negative pressure room or an isolation chamber.” Lucero said most of the training had been focused on emergency room and intensive care nurses. ER nurse Sheila Rowe of Redwood City said even after receiving more extensive training than her colleagues, she didn’t feel prepared to care for a patient with Ebola.

Previous: Kaiser Nurses Strike in East Bay, NorCal Over Ebola Concerns, Staffing

Rowe said her managers required her to watch a short video on how to put on and take off an Ebola suit and then she was given an Ebola protocol fact sheet. She then sat through a training course where someone demonstrated how to take the suits on and off, but she never had the chance to do it herself, Rowe said. Although her managers told her they had suits available should an Ebola patient come through the Redwood City emergency room, Rowe said she has never seen the suits and don’t know where they’re being kept. Rowe said her managers said they would use a plastic sheet to create an “isolation” room, which she said is unrealistic.

Lucero, Triunfo-Cortez and Oakland nurse Lupe Palacios, all of whom do not work in the ER or ICU, said they were only provided with a short educational video on Ebola and given an Ebola protocol worksheet. Representatives from Kaiser said in a statement that they established an Ebola command center, equipped hospitals and medical centers with the resources to safely screen and isolate patients at risk for Ebola, and have been training staff members on how to use the correct protective gear.

They did not specifically address the nurses’ allegations that the training is passive, not interactive, and that the equipment is not readily accessible to nurses. The danger presented by Ebola is even more acute given shortfalls in staffing levels, Rowe said.

“It’s not only Ebola, but it’s the whole situation with the state of health care. We’re not prepared,” Rowe said. “We have just enough to take care of who is in front of us but (management) is not looking at the big picture.” According to Triunfo-Cortez, Kaiser has more than 2,000 current openings for nurses across California. Kaiser officials said in a statement Tuesday that nurses were using the Ebola scare to gain leverage in a negotiation to boost staffing levels.

“For weeks, union leadership has claimed to the public that this strike is about Ebola,” the statement said. “In the last day or so, the union has changed its message and now says to the public that the strike is about ‘staffing.’ Just as the union’s Ebola message is not sticking because it is not supported by the facts, this new reason for striking by the union also isn’t true.”

Triunfo-Cortez countered that the nurses would cease their strike if management agreed to provide interactive training and adequate equipment and facilities to treat patients with Ebola.

“We’re willing to discuss (staffing) at a later date if they address these issues now, which is about Ebola,” Triunfo-Cortez said.

By Bay City News

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