This week, we delivered our petition, signed by more than a thousand Nurses and Licensed Medical Professionals from Riverside Community Hospital and Los Robles Regional Medical Center. Management sat stone-faced—a captive audience—as we read our demands for safer staffing, stronger security, reliable equipment, and real investment in Nurses.

Alicia M., a Riverside Community Hospital Mother-Infant Unit Nurse, looked management in the eye as she chastised them for their “failure to understand how dangerous the hospital has become” for patients.

“Every near miss adds to our anxiety,” said Alicia M., a Mother-Infant Unit Nurse at Riverside Community Hospital.

Alicia shared that recently, a newborn baby required extensive resuscitation. There weren’t enough specially trained nurses on hand to maintain patient safety. Alicia reported it wasn’t an isolated incident, but one of many on her unit and throughout the hospital. “Every near miss adds to our anxiety,” she said.

We made it clear that HCA, which profited $7.8 billion last year, can and must do better. We’re at the table to make sure that they do.

So far, we’ve tentatively agreed to more than one-hundred articles, and there are another fifty in management’s court. Included are articles on flexing, securing work in the event of a unit closure, ensuring there are break nurses to maintain safe staffing, safe floating practices and being prepared for a public health emergency.

We’re back at the bargaining table on August 11. Stay tuned.

Unsafe staffing, security failures, a system designed for profit over care: Tell HCA the hard truths it doesn’t want to hear.

HCA in the news: More on the reported security failures at HCA’s Los Robles Regional Medical Center in the aftermath of an officer-involved shooting.

VC Star: Nurses say slow security & communication made them feel unsafe when police shot patient at Los Robles Regional Medical Center. →