MetroWest Medical Center/Leonard Morse Nurses to Picket on Nov. 19 To Call for Safer Staffing Levels to Ensure Quality Patient Care

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Nov 16, 2012, 09:00 ET

MetroWest Medical Center Has the Worst RN Staffing Levels in the Region

RNs Seek Improvements in RN-to-Patient Ratios to Prevent Care Complications

NATICK, Mass., Nov. 16, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The nurses of MetroWest Medical Center's Leonard Morse Hospital campus will hold an informational picket outside the Natick-based facility on Monday, Nov. 19, to call for desperately needed improvements in patient care conditions at this for-profit community hospital. The Nurses of the Massachusetts Nurses Association bargaining unit have serious concerns.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20060525/NETH016LOGO)

When: Monday, Nov. 19, 2012

Time: 2:30 – 4:30 p.m. (We expect the largest turnout to be at 3:30, the change of shift)

Where: Outside the Entrance to MetroWest Medical Center's Leonard Morse Hospital Campus, 67 Union St., Natick Mass

The nurses have serious concerns about the hospital's failure to provide appropriate RN staffing levels, which has resulted in nurses being forced to care for too many patients at one time on nearly every unit, which, according to medical research, places patients at a greater risk for complications during their hospital stay.

In fact, according to official staffing plans posted on the Mass. Hospital Association's "Patient Care Link" web site, MetroWest Medical Center has the worst RN staffing levels in the region, and is among the worst staffing in the state.

The owner of the hospital, Vanguard Health Care, is a multi-billion dollar, for-profit corporation that also owns St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, where Vanguard has negotiated a contract with those nurses that includes safe RN-to-patient staffing levels to ensure high quality patient care.

The nurses at MetroWest Medical Center are in negotiations for a new union contract and are simply asking Vanguard to provide its patients in the MetroWest region with the same safe standard of care they are providing patients in Worcester.

Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest professional health care organization and the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public. The MNA is also a founding member of National Nurses United, the largest national nurses union in the United States with more than 170,000 members from coast to coast.

SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association