THE NNOC TEXAS SUPPORTS FIRED NURSES

ICU RNs Pleaded with Health Management Associates to Fully Staff Intensive Care Unit; Instead They Were Fired



The firing on Monday, June 4th, of three nurses, employed by Health Management Associates at Dallas Regional Medical Center in Mesquite, brings forth the necessity to inform the public of a growing dangerous practice among health care systems. These Registered Nurses, Diana Sepeda, Nancy Friesen, and Sandra Taylor were fired for voicing their concerns for the safety of their patients due to the chronic understaffing of registered nurses in the ICU unit at the Mesquite facility where they were employed as critical care nurses. The nurses informed the charge nurse, the head nurse, and then the supervisor of nursing that they did not feel they could guarantee safe and quality care if they were forced to take on responsibility for the additional care of three high acuity patients each instead of the 1:2 nurse patient ratio mandated by the Standards of Nursing Practice. The nursing supervisor insisted that they either take three patients each or go home. They were also told that they were not professionals based on their concerns that they could not safely provide care for a case load consisting of more than a 1:2 nurse to patient ratio of patients with multiple high risk needs.
The NNOC’s position in support of its members at the Mesquite facility of Health Care Management Systems is this: Health Care Management Systems will agree to: (1.) Minimum RN-to-patient staff ratios in all ICU units will be 1:2 at all times on all shifts; (2.) The Hospital will not discipline any nurse who adheres to this staff-to-patient ratio to the obligations laid out in the Texas Nursing Practices Act; (3.) the Hospital will rescind its terminations of the RNs who protested the Hospitals violation of the 1:2 standard. NNOC would like to state publicly that this level of staffing is considered by these good nurses to be so vital to patient well being that they were willing to risk their jobs to protect their patients.
Concerns for their patient’s due to over loaded nurse-to-patient ratios has been studied at the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, School of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania. The objective of this study was to discover the relationship between the patient-to-nurse ratios and patient mortality, deaths following complications among surgical patients, and factors related to nurse retention. The conclusion of this study supports the concerns by nurses Sepeda, Friesen, and Taylor. In hospitals with high patient-to-nurse ratios, surgical patients experience higher risk-adjusted 30-day mortality rates. Nurses were also more likely to suffer burnout and job dissatisfaction. For each additional patient a nurse has, patients face a 7% greater chance of dying within 30 days.
Because of their concern for their patients before themselves and because they chose to stand up for Professional Nursing Standards these dedicated ICU nurses were wrongfully terminated. This simply should not be tolerated and these dedicated Professionals immediately re-instated.