New reporting from the Ventura County Star describes how Nurses at Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks felt a slow response from hospital security and a lack of communication or alerts from hospital management made Nurses feel unsafe when a police officer shot a patient earlier this month.

Rob Quan, an operating room Nurse, and SEIU 121RN member, was working on the first floor of the hospital when the shooting happened on the fourth floor. The hospital issued a safety notification, but management did not upgrade that notification to show that a patient was shot, he said.

“Once we found out there was a shooting there was a lot of shock and fear. No one really knew what was going on for sure,” he said. “There were just rumors flying and people making up stuff. No one knew what to believe yet,” Quan told VC Star reporter Tom Kisken.

The story raises serious questions about how the hospital handled a violent situation, questions our union brought pressed hospital management to answer during ongoing contract negotiations on behalf of the caregivers who work there.

“ER nurses were not even notified something was even happening,” said SEIU 121RN Executive Director Rosanna Mendez. “They learned about it when they saw law enforcement officers with guns drawn going into the hospital.”

Nurses said the hospital made several mistakes, first Nurses reported hospital security took more than five minutes to respond, Mendez said, in part because the hospital’s security dispatch call center is in Las Vegas. The appropriate alarms also weren’t activated, meaning employees weren’t told there was a shooting, she added.

Better safety measures, like having security personnel onsite, and better communication from hospital management when dangerous situations happen, could have potentially prevented the incident from happening earlier this month, or at least reduced confusion and fear in the hospital, Mendez said.

“Our agenda is one of safety, safety for our members and safety in the hospital in general,” Mendez said.

SEIU 121RN will continue to fight for safety protocols and protections our members need to do their jobs without fear for their own lives and the lives of their patients.

Read more of the story at the VC Star.