Join the Tufts Medical Center and Boston Medical Center Nurses for a Joint Informational Picket to Protest Unsafe Staffing and Practice Conditions
When:
Thursday, February 11, 2010
BMC Picket: 7:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Tufts Picket: is 2 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Where:
Boston Medical Center
East Newton St. Campusn
88 East Newton St., Boston
Tufts Medical Center
750 Washington St, Boston
The registered nurses of Boston Medical Center’s East Newton Campus and Tufts Medical Center, who are represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, are taking the unprecedented step of conducting joint informational picketing outside their respective facilities on Feb. 11, 2010 to protest what they believe are dangerous changes in RN staffing levels, which will result in nurses caring for too many patients at one time and could compromise the quality of patient care.
This action has nothing to do with the nurses’ wages or benefits, It is about their concern for the health and well being of the patients under their care.
Boston Medical Center, which is a level one trauma center, and Tufts Medical Center, which has a level one pediatric trauma and level two adult trauma center, care for some of the sickest patients in the Commonwealth, requiring a more intense level of nursing care to keep patients safe. At current staffing levels, nurses contend it has been a struggle to provide the level of care patients deserve. Now, both hospitals are proposing staffing changes that increase the number of patients assigned to many of their nurses, and neither facility is adequately adjusting their level of nursing care based on “patient acuity,” which is the actual needs or illness level of the patients. At both facilities, nurses believe management is pushing staff to move patients through the hospital faster and faster without providing the resources to support this speed up in care delivery.
At both facilities, hospital and nursing administrators have refused to fulfill legal obligations to work with the nurses to address nurses’ concerns about working conditions that affect patient safety or patient care.
While nurses understand the strictures of the current economic climate, we also believe many hospitals are exploiting this situation to boost their bottom line. Patients should not pay the price for misguided decisions to cut costs by decreasing the presence of the RNs at the bedside as these decisions impact quality patient care.
Come picket with the nurses and join them in calling for safe staffing levels and a commitment to make patient care the first priority at these two hospitals. .
Directions to Tufts Medical Center
Visit: http://www.tuftsmedicalcenter.org/AboutUs/Directions
Directions to Boston Medical Center’s East Newton Campus
Visit: http://www.bmc.org/patients/directions/car-specificlocations.htm
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