We met management again on Friday to negotiate our contract. We wanted to make sure that they left the table understanding one thing: safe staffing matters. A group of your co-workers joined your bargaining team at the table to deliver that message...and AHMC got an earful.

As Nurses, we take an oath to be our patients’ advocates. When they can’t speak for themselves, we are their voice.

—Jack Katrdzhyan, ICU/CCU

(read Jack's story below)

Your colleagues spoke truth to power, explaining in detail the multitude of ways that AHMC's failure to invest in Nurses impacts your patients. And despite their negotiator's poker face, we know they heard us.

🔥Now, it's time to turn up the heat.🔥

"As Nurses, we take an oath to be our patients’ advocates. When they can’t speak for themselves, we are their voice. That mission is impossible to carry out when the system itself is broken. Too often, we work without sufficient staffing from nursing to ancillary departments, while combatting issues caused by faulty or outdated equipment and EMR.

On a recent shift I was floated to 3 East, where I was stretched to the max. My assignment included three level four acuity patients, and a fourth who deserved more attention than I could possibly provide with that workload. That patient, a woman in her eighties who was under monitoring for a stroke, had failed an initial swallow screening and could not be fed safely without further evaluation. The next step in her recovery was to bring in a speech therapist for a thorough swallow evaluation, but there was only one speech therapist available for the entire hospital. For three days, this poor woman ingested only liquids though a nasogastric tube with the most basic nutrients because she could not be cleared to eat solid food safely as our speech therapist is incapable of evaluating her due to his own workload. I reached out to the speech therapist as often as I could, but with so many other critical patients to attend to, it was impossible to follow up constantly. I explained to her family—who were rightfully concerned—that we were doing all we could, in an attempt to put them at ease while I was masking my own frustration related lack of inappropriate staffing.

I know that our hospital can do better. It’s time for AHMC to prioritize patient care over the company’s bottom line."

—Jack Katrdzhyan, RN, CCU/ICU, Garfield Medical Center