BANGOR, Maine — A report released Wednesday by a labor group contends that nurse understaffing is having a negative effect on patient care at Eastern Maine Medical Center, but EMMC officials question the report’s sourcing, data and timeliness.
The report, presented by the Worker Rights Board of Eastern Maine during a press conference Wednesday morning at the Bangor Public Library, says that:
• “Workload and stress caused by understaffing, shift schedules and job requirements have had a critical, negative effect on patient care at EMMC.”
• “At times there is authoritarian and disrespectful supervision of nurses in the hospital and a fear of reprisal toward those who question policies.”
• “Nurses must be viewed with more respect, as professionals with experience and expertise in medical care.”
• “EMMC administration must be more transparent and accountable to the community.”
“We’ve just received a copy of the report,” said Greg Howat, EMMC’s vice president of human resources. “I don’t see any data that specifically refers to EMMC’s staffing levels and it appears to be a lot of narrative, thoughts, and opinions from nurses and patients, but not a lot of scientific data.”
According to the board, the report’s conclusions are based on information gleaned from interviews, meetings and “an extensive investigation of the issues involved” through much of 2011. The board said the report resulted from a request for assistance from the Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses United union in the fall of 2010 during contentious contract negotiations with EMMC.
Unionized nurses ratified a three-year contract with EMMC in May.
“Frankly, this study has been in the works since last April, and done by an arm of the Eastern Maine Labor Council,” Howat said. “I think a lot of this stuff is from 18 months ago.”
Steve Akerley, a registered nurse for the last 20 of his 30 years at EMMC, attended the news conference to emphasize some of the points of the report.
“There have been many studies that show what all nurses know: that safe nurse-to-patient ratios save lives,” he said.
“Each additional patient added to a nurse’s workload is associated with a 7 percent increase in mortality following common surgeries, a 53 percent increase in respiratory failure, and a 17 percent increase in medical complications,” he added.
Akerley said he was referring to data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
“There are some percentages there, but I think those relate to hospitals in general,” said Howat. “Those are not EMMC-specific, and I don’t know where that data comes from. I’m not seeing a lot of information in there that analyzes our staffing levels or rations them by unit or in the aggregate. It’s mainly impressions and reports from nurses on their sense of what it’s like to work.”
EMMC Chief Nursing Officer Jodi Galli said EMMC’s staffing is based on nationally acceptable levels.
“In response to consistent changes in volume in our organization, we’ve actually hired more nurses,” she said. “Since April of 2011, we’ve hired a net of 38 staff nurses, plus 28 nurse techs and unit secretaries as a whole, for a total of 66 new hires.”
Galli also cited EMMC’s high retention rate for staff nurses — 94.9 percent for the recently ended 2012 fiscal year.
The report cites 12-hour shifts as one example of a scheduling practice that isn’t popular with nurses and negatively affects care, something Howat and Galli both vehemently disagree with.
“It’s a surprise to me that 12-hour shifts are listed as a concern and may be too long to work,” Howat said. “Some of our nurses, in fact many of them, prefer the current 12-hour shift system.”
Akerley, a member of the Maine State Nurses Association, admitted that some staffing improvements have been made, but not enough.
The report’s conclusion that more respect for and input from nurses is needed also rankled EMMC officials.
Galli referred to EMMC’s Transforming Care at Bedside program, made up of bedside nursing staff members who are asked to share observations and ideas on how best to improve patients’ experiences.
“We also have a citizen advisory council comprised of people from the community, some of whom have been our patients or had loved ones who were patients,” Galli said.
Galli said another option available three times a year is an anonymous employee engagement survey allowing employees to give input on their managers, working environment and quality of care.
“We’ve received many acknowledgements and recognitions for the quality and services we provide to our patients and we very much respect our nursing staff and their input,” said Galli. “They are the core of our patient care team.”
Members of the the Worker Rights Board of Eastern Maine who spoke at the press conference were state Rep. Adam Goode, D-Bangor, retired teacher Julie Grab, the Rev. Mark Doty, and Bill Murphy, director of the University of Maine’s Bureau of Labor Education.
EMMC have fine nurses, they are excellent!!!
I just spent over a week there,Some are WONDERFUL!!!!,yes.Some are there just to collect a paycheck and to be able to be mean to someone.I saw it FIRST hand.. Some of the older ones either need an attitude adjustment or they need to move on to another job.,maybe one where.they deal with ,oh,cans or tires,or something..There is a certain shot,that everyone who has surgery HAS to have.Heparin.If done just 3 seconds slower they are painless.If they are done fast,They feel like getting snapped in the stomach with a thick elastic.Guess who used the painless technique?Yup,the ‘new ,and young nurses’ And the one returning from 9 years at ‘Life Flight” He and they were wonderful.They actually at least ‘acted ‘like they gave a da**. The older ones ‘knew better’,didnt have time{3 to 5 seconds} and had such chips on their shoulders.So,Kathy?Maybe you should,,,move on?
LOL…I’ve had that shot at EMMC.I think they used a large knitting needle like my grandmother had to make mittens.-just kidding! I had a male nurse who was terrific. The only complaint I have with shots is what I call the “shot across the bow” warning. This is going to sting, prick a bit, be a little uncomfortable,feel a little sensation and 10 others. They never use JAB or STAB do they? And by the way they really are understaffed at times.
Here’s a solution – cut the overpaid unionized nurse compensation by 25% and use the savings to hire additional nurses. Its all about patient care correct?? Ya right.
So if you need a collage education to do a job you should not earn more money ?
The “patient safety” issue is a perennial problem with EMMC that is temporarily solved every year with an increase in nurse compensation. The union does not seem to understand that people are lucky to have a job in Obama’s economy, let alone a merit increase every year. If the nurses want more compensation, let them work more hours like many other college educated professionals in the Bangor region – not just three 12-hour shifts per week.
Sounds like you favor government by and for corporations (Romney’s view) rather than by and for the people. You’re actually applauding the notion that all workers should feel so lucky to have a job that they’ll accept any working conditions and whatever low pay they’re offered, no questions asked.
That’s Romney’s dream–a frightened, helpless, and passive workforce that employers can exploit at will. A workforce hobbled by his divide-and-conquer technique, so people who are envious of better paid workers try to bring them down rather than taking the responsibility to improve their own working conditions and pay. It’s the Republican dream–the race to the bottom for workers, all power to the corporate bosses.
yes”” other person who hopes Obama wins so they can keep that welfare check!!!! keep on with those lies.
Republican politicians have convinced you that anyone who advocates for workers is unemployed and on welfare. Do you notice any internal contradiction in that notion?
For the record, I’m a professional and work 45-50 hour weeks for good pay. My husband is retired from the military and from a decades-long civilian job.
And perish the thought that any of their devout, ill-educated followers would even consider questioning their illustrious leaders. When it comes to educating themselves, they redefine “lazy.”
It doesn’t matter Romney or Obama the economy sucks, jobs are hard to come by and many health care facilities face cuts and in these cuts are no merit raises. These places are sucking it up or getting jobs ( if they can find one) else where.
Don’t forget that Obama cut payments to hospitals for medicare and medicaid patients.
True, and Baldi was sticking Maine providers for around $500 Million before Lepage brought them up to around 50% of Current Payments Due!
I’m no fan of LePage, but he’s had to clean up so many messes left over from Baldi, including HHS, Maine as the ONLY Sanctuary State in the Nation, and the wholesale liquor sales debacles.
Great commentary. Thanks for saying it.
Please tell us you’re just kidding
otherwise, that’s right ip there with the “birthers”, “truthers”, and “black ops” folks!
Republican leaders keep trying to privatize everything in sight.
They hope to turn our Social Security benefits over to Wall Street, which will privatize profits with every transaction (“churning”) while the risk is all ours.
They want to kill public education and institute corporate schools that work on a financial profit motive. It’s been proven over and over that these are NOT going to produce better outcomes than public schools, except for the ones that cherry-pick only the brightest students and quickly force out any students with real problems.
They are quickly privatizing prisons. The US has a metastacizing growth of for-profit prisons, which are giving rise to situations in which judges get kickbacks for sending teens to be incarcerated on little or no evidence. Who controls these? Hands-off! They’re corporations.
They are encouraging their followers to hate and try to abolish unions, to make sure that corporations have all the power and workers have none. Their Ayn Rand-inspired philosophy envisons Americans as individuals who should never dare or hope to join with other workers, to advocate for better working conditions or higher pay. No, it should be every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost, as though any single individual would have the resources to win concessions on his or her own from a multi-national company.
Their fairly successful effort to reduce the ranks of public employees is being felt in local communities across the country, where newly unemployed people can’t pay bills and buy less at local stores.
They hope to destroy the social safety net. If they succeed, workers will be doubly desperate–if fired (however unjustly) or laid off or disabled on the job, they will have to hope that an entirely disorganized non-system of local churches (better keep on the good side of the pastor!), philanthropists, Salvation Army, friends, and relatives will donate food and clothing and repair their home when it starts to fall in. Better make sure all your relatives live as long as you do, and are wealthy and very committed to you.
Destroying the social safety net will also help destroy our local communities, since unemployed workers will have no unemployment comp to spend in their town.
They fight against raising the minimum wage–millions of workers earning minimum wage depend on Medicaid and food stamps to survive, but these will be ripped away along with the rest of the social safety net.
They fight against single-payer health insurance, calling it “socialism” (a buzz word they’ve trained their followers to be frightened by) to make sure the for-profit insurers keep reaping profits while delivering very poor services and excluding tends of millions of Americans from necessary health care.
They encourage their followers to believe that bad things happen only to people who deserve bad things. Since they themselves are surely good people, nothing bad will happen to them, so making sure that no help exists won’t matter.
If and when Republicans who believe this find out that bad things DO happen to good people–when they are bankrupted by medical expenses, or have a disabled child who needs all sorts of benefits and services, or lose their job and can’t find another, they will do their best to suffer in lonely, individual silence, reminding themselves that their plight is entirely an individual problem and undeserving of government help of any kind.
Americans banding together for the common good? That would be socialism! They don’t really know what that is, except that it’s bad and they’d literally rather suffer and die than accept “socialized” education, health care, welfare, fire departments, police forces, old age security, and so on.
I assume you are referring to a post-secondary education as opposed to an assemblage of different forms used in various types of artwork?
What dose artwork half to do with the Nureses ? ?
Overpaid is a matter of perspective.
Maybe you are underpaid and can’t see it!
Ah, yes. The race to the bottom advocates. God forbid any workers should join to advocate for better pay and working conditions. If unions can be destroyed, all employers will be able to do as they please to a helpless workforce. This should especially apply to all professionals who help people, right? Because surely the joy of helping people should far outweigh anyone’s need for decent working conditions, wages, and benefits.
Why this argument would appeal to anyone who works for a living amazes me. If you so deeply envy the higher pay of people who advocate for themselves, I suggest you try taking some personal responsibility–form a union in your own workplace–rather than just trying to tear down people more successful than you.
Every job should be unionized and those that can’t be should at least be paid a living wage($10/hour)Unions built this country,TPers destroyed it,starting with Reagan.The chumps who voted for him should apologize to their families for ruining their income and prospects.
With elderly parents,I’ve spent more time in hospitals the last few years than I’d care to.
The medical professionals at EMMC and elsewhere deserve everything they get and more.
this has nothing to do with envy….it has to do with the use of coercion and collective force to reach an end that is otherwise achievable through individual means (i.e. merit)
coercion via the collective is immoral and offensive….there are MILLIONS of Americans who have done just fine without using such societal destructive means, I suggest YOU try taking some personal responsibility and join the rest of America
if you like communism so much move to russia ,this is america and it was made great due to the unions,people like you are mere cowards and afraid to stand up for whats right.
Another “armchair nurse” heard from. You anti-unionists have short memories. Nothing says “hypocrisy” like those who enjoy the benefits of the labor movement, while condemning those who work to keep them there.
And, nothing spells “hypocrisy” more than those who enjoy the fruits of hard-working small business owners and proclaim, “You didn’t build that without Government help”!
Would you be the same “Sawyer” who deals in trash? If so, ’nuff said.
True, I spent thirty years making your siht “disappear” since folks like you couldn’t be bothered… AND recycled a million tires a year in the process.
So, don’t whine to me about cleaning feces off of patients, I’ve manhandled everything just about everything local hospitals have discarded!
Stick to what you are good at, then.
What would you consider a reasonable wage to clean feces off another human being? Or to be assaulted by a confused patient? Holding the hand of someone while they pass away?
I take it you wouldn’t mind the “cheaply paid” nurse at your bedside.
Sounds like a Nurses Union P.R firm, circle file this “report”
Adam Goode? seriously?!?
Sir, post your resume here and show us how you are qualified to comment on labor issues.
Oh wait, I found it on your website “Occupation: Coach and Graduate Student”
I can see you have lots of life experience related to healthcare and how hospitals should be staffed. Have you held any paying jobs yourself other than government?
He probably took a “Labor” history course so now he feels he knows about the “struggle”.
Adam Goode’s resume as seen below:
.
Actually, I think EMMC could use more doctors so people don’t have to wait 3+ hours just to be seen. On top of that, they need to learn to COMMUNICATE! My poor pregnant cousin was stressed right out during a stay there recently cause everyone was telling her something different. :( It was really a terrible situation for her. :(
My mom was diagnosed as having dementia because she raised heck at night.She was there 2 months,Her chart was CLEARLY maked,’Please dont give this patient Ambien’. I wrote in BIG BLACK MARKER”please dont give this patient Ambien!!!!Yet,every night they dosed her with Ambien.Finally,I went to the D.O.N. and expresssed my concern.She stopped it,but my mom was constantly being asked for the remainder of her stay,if she’d like an Ambien!WTF?????{By the way,she is doing great now that I got her out of that place and is ludicd as a judge.} I watch “Greys Anatomy’,because it is the funniest silliest non true to life show ever..lol.The medical staff actors ‘running to the E.R with their stethoscpoes swaying,the doctors agonizing over treatments in their fine offices.Someone who wrote that show had a SPECTACULAR imaginagion!!!!!!
Anyone, I repeat-anyone-who has a loved one admitted to any hospital should read and re-read justanother’s comment. Medical records are not read by ANYONE. People need to make sure their loved one is never left in a room without a family member present at all times. I almost died at a Waterville hospital 5 years ago, due to negligence because the hospital was so short staffed.
Short staffed=less patient care. The administration can spin it anyway they want. Want the truth? Then ask a nurse.
They’ll just wait until they have a high profile death and then pay out $Millions instead of spending a little money up front for safety and comfort.That’s after they try to hush it up.I’ve seen it in nursing homes.
Thats what the hospital has insurance for
So, it’s basically unsafe to be a patient at EMMC? Thanks, I will request St Joe’s.
Right looks like they may be complaining themselves right out of a job. My mom was there earlier this year. The nurses were great and I didn’t see any unsafe conditions. She rang a bell it was answered timely.
My wife was there recently for an operation. I saw first hand the slow as molasses response to urgent patient needs, the disorganization, the lack of communication, the less than efficient interface between patient, family and staff. It could be a whole lot better. They say we have the “best health care system in the world” here in the U.S. At least that’s what right wing pundits say and their audience parrots. I invite them to have a stay at EMMC, Waldo County General, Pen Bay Hospital or any number of substandard facilities in our state. Let’s see how they like it then. I am thankful that we are not a third world country and that we have Brigham and Women’s, Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic and other first class facilities, but there is much room for improvement. The costs need to come way down and the state needs to attract the most talented doctors and nurses we can. Again, I am thankful for the care we have, but it could be way better.
I have been there for heart problems and all my needs were met very quickly and efficiently. I didn’t have any problems what so ever. The nurses were very professional and caring. Probably the ones that are complaining are lazy and don’t want any increase in their work load.
an that section you were in is a credical section heat patiants come before any one else
Don’t tell that to cheesecake she will not believe you that because she works there an is an expert
Of course the union wants more members. They get more dues money. This is really what it is all about. EMMC needs to decertify this union.
So they can get rid of people an pile more patents on the others ?
EMMC fits national standards for ratios of patients to nurses.
You dump the union to get this crap out of the paper.
???
I’m tired of poor union nurse stories.
Well if you think they have it so great why don’t you become a nurse an do there work or don’t you dare to because you just mite half to do some work an be on the run all night long .Than we all can here how you had to work so hard .
If the nurses want to be shown more respect maybe they should start showing others some respect. They treat other college-educated healthcare professionals in the hospital like crap and then complain of no respect. They have the power of a union behind them to drive their wages up at the expense of the rest of the staff, most of whom are college educated as well. This is about greed, a feeling of entitlement and a holier-than-thou attitude that is far too prevalent amongst the nurses union.
You do realize that those nurses at EMMC don’t exactly make a lot more money than the non-union nurses in the are right? I don’t exactly see there wages being ‘driven’ anywhere. Not that I’d work there for what they get. I’m an RN also and would rather flip burgers than work at EMMC.
I see other non-nursing professionals either getting no raises or getting extremely low raises so the nurses can get what their union has bullied their way to. This drives down the wages for the rest of the hospital staff, other than of course the administration who will get theirs no matter what.
More shat about EMMC being under staffed….go figure. I personally have NO use for that hospital due to past ( not too long ago ) issues with more than one member of my family. Cry all they want, EMMC will NEVER be half the hospital that St. Joes is ! You want nurses that actually care about their patients……go to St. Joes !
People – we all know two things:
1) The people who made the report the “Worker Rights Board of Eastern Maine” has a biased agenda.
2) There is not an epidemic of people being killed at EMMC because of staffing shortages
Nuf Ced
My God! Patients must be dieing left and right. Based on this report every patient should have TWO nurses assigned just to them 24 hours a day.
I’m not sure what this would do to the cost of health care, but who cares about that. Even if it costs millions to prevent even 1 negative outcome.
“Many of the greatest things man has achieved are not the result of consciously directed thought, and still less the product of a deliberately coordinated effort of many individuals, but of a process in which the individual plays a part which he can never fully understand.” – F.A. Hayek