Understaffing, broken pay promises and low morale among nurses at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital have inspired a no confidence vote against hospital administrators.
On Wednesday the National Nurses Organizing Committee, the nurses’ union, called for a no confidence vote for Rita Fowler, vice president of patient care services and chief nursing officer, and Chris Greenley, human resources director. In-person voting closed on Wednesday, and virtual polls will close Sunday at midnight according to the Advocate, a hospital nurses’ newsletter.
The National Nurses Organizing Committee says motivations for the vote at SLU Hospital — one of only two union hospitals in the region — include a 20 percent reduction of emergency department nurses; continual low staffing of registered nurses and nurse assistants across departments; SSM rescinding an accepted retention bonus for union nurses; no signing bonuses; and disregard for the staff’s low morale and low retention.
The union says SLU Hospital’s RN vacancy rate tops 30 percent; that’s compared to an overall rate of about 11 percent in St. Louis, according to The Missouri Hospital Association 2021 Workforce Report.
“And yet, administration has cut extra shift incentives, overtime pay and traveler pay, and spent tens of thousands on legal fees to avoid paying nurses their correct base rates,” according to the Advocate newsletter.
Sarah DeWilde, a trauma ICU RN, says the worst of the staffing problems began when SLU Hospital opened its new building in 2020, with nurses leaving but not being replaced. Six weeks ago the hospital reopened Bordley Tower and its 15 beds, and hasn’t yet hired nurses to staff them. The administration also recently announced adding at least 20 additional beds on July 1.
DeWilde says that normally there would be about 650 RNs at the hospital, but it currently employs only 550. She believes that, with the expansions, it would need to hire an additional 200 nurses.
“No one has been hired,” says DeWilde, the union’s professional practice committee chair. “Who's going to take care of those people?”
“There's going to be another surge,” she adds, “another mass exodus of nurses that are leaving because the conditions are getting worse, and they were already bad.”
DeWilde says the nurses have not received an explanation for the understaffing, or why the hospital has not implemented measures to improve morale and increase retention among the current staff.
SLU Hospital communications did not immediately respond to the RFT’s request for comment.
DeWilde says the union has focused on Fowler because she’s displayed a lack of respect for the nurses and a lack of leadership. In January, the union filed an unfair labor practice charge against Greenley with the National Labor Relations Board for stopping nurses from coming into the hospital on off hours for union activities.
“We had been escorted out by police or the security in the hospital because they felt that we should have informed them before we came in,” DeWilde says, noting that should only apply to the labor rep.
DeWilde is hopeful that the vote will bring attention to the nurses’ concerns.
“We just wanted to give them a piece of what we're feeling because at the moment now nothing seems to be happening,” she says.
The nurses’ discontent comes at a time of difficulty for the nursing profession amid the ongoing pandemic. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported yesterday that, since the start of the pandemic, as much as 75 percent of RNs have turned over in the Barnes-Jewish Hospital medical ICU.
Additionally, around the country, rising wages for travel nurses have increasingly drawn staff away from permanent positions.
