Current conditions and excessive patient assignments for nurses are compromising the quality and safety of the care they provide, exposing their patients to an increased risk for poor outcomes and preventable harm
PLYMOUTH, MA – Early this week, the 420 registered nurses of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Plymouth (BID Plymouth) gave official notice to BID administration that they will be holding a vote to authorize a three-day strike and conducting an informational picket outside the Plymouth Public Library on Thursday, March 20th. Both events culminate a month’s long effort to convince BID management of the need for significant improvements in staffing, along with other provisions in a new union contract to allow the facility to recruit and retain the staff needed to provide safer patient care.
“We became nurses to serve our community-to advocate, care for and protect the most vulnerable individuals in their moment of need and ensure appropriate monitoring and care of these patients. Our hospital has implemented staffing plans that compromise our ability to provide the care we so desperately want and need to provide this community,” said Liz Taylor, RN, the co-chair of the nurses MNA local bargaining unit for the hospital. “We simply don’t have the staff or the time we need to monitor and care for the patients the way we know they need to be cared for under current conditions.”
According Robert Doughlin, RN, a proud military veteran and nurse who has worked at BID for over 20 years and serves as co-chair of the nurses bargaining unit, “While we don’t want to strike, our administration needs to understand that for nurses the improvements we are seeking are essential to the future of nursing and patient care at this hospital; and for our community, we want them to understand their health and safety if not their very lives may depend on the successful outcome of this process.”
Strike Authorization Vote
When: Thursday, March 20th from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.
What: A positive vote will give the BID Plymouth nurses bargaining committee authorization to schedule a three-day strike if and when they feel that is necessary. The committee would be required to give the hospital 10 days’ notice before calling for a strike.
Informational Picket
When: Thursday March 20th from 3 – 5 p.m.
Where: Outside the Plymouth Public Library at 132 South St. in Plymouth.
Who: MNA nurses, family, friends, community supporters, and labor allies.
What: This is an informational picket, not a strike. Nurses can attend if they are not working, or on break.
Background on Negotiations – Key Issues: Staffing, Nurse Safety, Health Insurance and Wages
The nurses have been engaged in negotiations for a new contract since October 3, 2024, with 10 negotiating sessions held to date, and the next session scheduled for March 12th. The nurses’ current contract was set to expire on December 31, 2024, and has since been extended to March 31, 2025.
A key issue in dispute is the nurses’ call for improvements in staffing levels to ensure safer patient care. Earlier this month nurses made public a recently completed analysis of the hospital’s publicly reported staffing plans for 2025 which showed a deliberate reduction in nurse staffing levels, resulting in patients receiving up to 5 fewer hours of care each day, exposing them to an increased risk for poor outcomes and other complications. The full report with the actual staffing grids for each unit can be found here, or by contacting David Schildmeier at dschildmeier@mnarn.org.
To compensate for the cutbacks in staffing, the hospital has resorted to dangerous staffing alternatives, including the floating of nurses, which calls for moving nurses from one unit to another, often without regard for that nurse’s ability to provide the level of care required for patients on that unit, or utilizing mandatory overtime, forcing exhausted nurses to work extra hours to compensate for the lack of staff.
The real impact on patient care at BID-Plymouth has been reflected by the nurses with their filing in real time, official reports – known as “Objection to Unsafe Staffing Reports,”which are official reports nurses file in real time on any shift where they confront staffing conditions that threaten the health and safety of their patients. Since the implementation of the 2025 staffing plans, there has been a fourfold increase in the number of reports filed by nurses, with more than 90 such reports filed to date, one of which documented conditions in the emergency department that may have contributed to the death of a patient.
Nurses in the emergency department also report being assigned too many patients to safely manage, with nurses often asked to take on 7, 8 or 9 patients a time, including ICU level patients who are waiting to be admitted to the intensive care unit. As the ED nurses struggle to meet the needs of the current influx of patients, they have raised serious concerns about BI’s plan to renovate and expand the emergency department, doubling its size, when they don’t have the nurses to provide safe care in the ED as it is configured now.
Nurse Call for Improved Staffing
In response to these changes, the nurses at BID Plymouth are utilizing their ongoing negotiations for a new union contract as a vehicle to require the hospital to provide contractually enforceable staffing improvements to ensure patients receive appropriate levels of nursing care, and which can help prevent the burnout of nurses and stem the exodus of nurses that these conditions have caused. The nurses are also seeking language to ensure the ability of “charge nurses” who are free of patient assignments at the start of all shifts. A charge nurse is an RN on each floor/unit who is responsible for managing all aspects of nursing responsibilities during each shift, from processing patients in and out of the unit, to serving as a liaison with physicians about patient care needs, as well as to be available to help a less experienced nurse with a complex patient, or to take on patient assignments when other staff become overburdened due to an increase admissions. Right now, charges nurses at BID Plymouth often carry partial or full assignments, preventing them from fulfilling their vital role to ensure quality patient care.
Nurses Seek to Protect Health Insurance and Industrial Leave Benefits
While forcing nurses to be pushed to their physical limits, the hospital is also trying to reduce the length of their industrial accident leave benefit for nurses by half. When nurses are hurt on the job the hospital is seeking the ability push them to return to work within 90 days or risk losing their job. They are seeking this change when nurses across Massachusetts are significantly more likely to suffer an injury on the job, and when nurses are assaulted at work at a rate 12 times higher than any other worker.
The nurses are also fighting to keep their most popular health insurance plan-which the Hospital is trying to eliminate. If changed, this would increase the cost of family premiums by nearly $3000 per year alone. In addition, adding major increases in the total out-of-pocket costs with the current maximum of $5,000 per family changing to up to $18,000 per year. A more than 260% increase.
The other key issue the nurses have on the table is a competitive wage increase, that will allow BI Plymouth to recruit the nurses to fill the vacancies and to add the staff needed to provide appropriate care. The nurses are paid less than most other hospitals in the region and up to 30 percent less than nurses working in Boston hospitals, where many BID nurses who leave the facility choose to work. The hospital’s current wage proposal only increases nurses’ wages by 7.5% over the next 3 years, increases that for many nurses, will be negated by the increases in the cost for their health insurance benefit.
“For nurses, this is all about patient care. When you push that call button, we want and need to be there, and when you come to our emergency department, you need to be seen and evaluated in a timely manner, as in many cases, your life may depend on it,” Taylor concluded.
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