Gabriel Guillen, Palliative Care, St. John’s Regional Medical Center

“I’m a Palliative Care Nurse at St. John’s Regional Medical Center. That means that I take care of people who are dying, so that they can pass on without pain and in a respectful, compassionate way. I become one of the most important people in that patient’s life, in their final weeks and months. It is a heavy responsibility, and it’s a duty I feel blessed to have.

I had a patient who had a consult ordered on a Friday. Like all of our Palliative Care patients, this individual was facing a difficult road ahead. Because we didn’t have enough Nurses in my unit, the patient waited, and languished all weekend, having difficulty breathing. Had we seen them when the consult was ordered, they would have had a chance to fight. To breathe on their own. But because we couldn’t get to them for so long, that fight was diminished.

Patients who are dying don’t have time for Dignity to find ways to make safe staffing work in their business model. They, and we, need safe staffing now.”