Detroit ED Nurses refuse to work without more help, ordered to leave by Administration

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

Night shift staged a sit-in in the break room -did not accept assignment due to having SEVEN RN's to cover 100+ ED patients. Multiple patients on ventilators due to COVID-19. Usual staffing would have been 21 nurses to provide care for that many patients. Day shift stayed to provide care working 24hrs --supporting night shifts right to refuse unsafe assignment per news reports. Karen

CNN Wed April 8, 2020

By Paul P. Murphy, Ryan Young and Jake Carpenter, CNN

Detroit hospital nurses refuse to work without more help, ordered to leave

Quote

Emergency room nursing staff at a Detroit hospital were told to leave Sunday night after they refused to work and demanded more nurses be brought into their overrun emergency room, health care workers there told CNN.

The night shift ER nurses at Sinai-Grace Hospital refused to leave the break room until hospital administrators brought in more nurses to help out, a physician at the hospital told CNN.

Hospital administrators decided, after four hours of deliberation, they would not be bringing in any more nurses to help and that the nurses could get to work or leave the hospital, the doctor said.

Some did then leave, said the physician, who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity out of concern for their job. The details provided by the physician were corroborated by ER nurse Sal Hadwan, who discussed what happened in a video livestreamed on facebook...

...In the video, Hadwan said he and the other ER nurses shown were told leave the hospital.

"Tonight, it was the breaking point for us," Hadwan said in the video, streamed on Sunday night right before midnight.

"Because we cannot safely take care of your loved ones out here with just six, seven nurses and multiple (ventilators) and multiple people on drips. It's not right. We had two nurses the other day who had 26 patients with 10 (ventilators)." The nurses need extra help, because for three straight weeks they've had more than 110 patients in the ER, Hadwan said in the video....

Fox News2 TV report: https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/nurse-who-led-sit-in-at-sinai-grace-talks-staffing-shortage-amid-pandemic

[caliotter3]

Goes to show you can only push people so far.

[Wuzzie]

Yes, but they forced the day shift to stay and work for 24 hours and no help was brought in.

[cazreye]

Day shift supported their fellow nurses, knowing that there was nothing else to do to bring attention to the issue. Now that this has gotten publicity, the criminally incompetent management might do something about it. This hospital serves the poor in the worst part of Detroit. They are the one hospital that has refused to release numbers for covid patients. They have gotten away with short staffing and have recently had layoffs too. They are terrible.

[rob4546, ADN, BSN, MSN]

This article sounds very unreal. In the ICU, the number of patients I have ever cared for at one time was three. That was a long hard night, I don't think I ever sat down. How do 2 nurses take care of 10 ventilator patients AND a normal patient load?

[KatieMI, BSN, MSN, RN]

43 minutes ago, rob4546 said:

This article sounds very unreal. In the ICU, the number of patients I have ever cared for at one time was three. That was a long hard night, I don't think I ever sat down. How do 2 nurses take care of 10 ventilator patients AND a normal patient load?

I am absolutely not surprised. DMC was never much known for be a glamour and well-organized place while serving one of the poorest, the sickest and the worst managed American megapolis but since it was acquired by Tenet things there started to get really alarming. They lost several high-prestige programs due to Tenet pennies-pinching and refusal to keep enough of qualified personnel to run supportive services the way they need to be. I am afraid to even think what it might look like there in ER where there are no even relative staffing rules like in ICU and with probably no ICU beds available, patients being left in ER on drips and vents waiting for someone to die and "free the bed" for one of them. Especially in Sinai-Grace, the heart of inner city.

[buckchaser10]

So messed up. I can't imagine taking care of one ventilator patient let alone 10 of them at once. Those poor nurses and poor patients. I'm curious what the hospital could have done here to help the nurses, mandation? I mean the day nurses were already picking up to allow them to do sit-in. 24 hour shifts for nurses who are working in that environment is not safe. Was the issue that they didn't schedule the staff or is the issue that there just isn't staff? If there isn't enough staff then patients need to be transferred. They aren't doing justice by the patients with those types of ridiculous ratios. Sounds like they skate by with this garbage though because they aren't serving a prominent crowd. So messed up.

[theoneandonly]

good for the nurses who stood up to the criminal management/admin. That's an unsafe assignment. Detroit is a trash city

[Workitinurfava, BSN, RN]

Moral of the story is, they will move on without you and in most cases punish those who stay, setting a tone. What a mess. Do what's best for you folks.

[mtlrn]

worked for a tenet hospital in an poor black neighborhood @10 yrs ago- came on shift to step down unit and had 2 staff nurses to care for 12 patients....no tech, unit sec, charge nurse...just 2 RN's! Left that job asap but learned valuable lesson; admin will work you as hard as they can get away with and will sleep like babies at night.

Because of all the $$$ lost from elective procedures I expect hospitals will do more of this kind of thing in the future to make up for lost revenue-mutiple hospital facilities have even made their employees take a pay cut- in a Pandemic!

[Lauragfa2000]

On 4/8/2020 at 11:37 PM, buckchaser10 said:

So messed up. I can't imagine taking care of one ventilator patient let alone 10 of them at once. Those poor nurses and poor patients. I'm curious what the hospital could have done here to help the nurses, mandation? I mean the day nurses were already picking up to allow them to do sit-in. 24 hour shifts for nurses who are working in that environment is not safe. Was the issue that they didn't schedule the staff or is the issue that there just isn't staff? If there isn't enough staff then patients need to be transferred. They aren't doing justice by the patients with those types of ridiculous ratios. Sounds like they skate by with this garbage though because they aren't serving a prominent crowd. So messed up.

It sounds like a nightmare. I work with peds on vents and I have 1 per shift. Keep in mind my patients are only released when they are stable. 10 unstable is something I would not be able to do, even under the best of conditions. Unimaginable. The alarms alone would be enough to push me over the edge. In my case the alarm is usually nothing more than repositioning. There is of course the occasional plug and frequent, or not, suctioning but that's really about it. I'm not making light of it it's just I realize my day doesn't even begin to compare to what is going on in hospitals all over the world.

[nrsang97, BSN, RN]

DMC is run by Tenet which is for profit. Siani Grace has been a mess for a long time. I have never heard any good about working there or any other DMC facility except for Children's Hospital.

Those nurses were not really wanting to leave, but wanted to get extra help. Where were the nurse managers and assistant managers? Why weren't they working the ER with them?

I work for a different health system in the area. Our managers get out there and help.

How management has treated their staff at DMC and especially Siani Grace is awful.