Patient Safety a Hot Topic in Twin Cities Nurses Strike

Jun. 11 -MINNEAPOLIS - Thousands of members of the Minnesota Nurses Association, including nurses from southeastern Minnesota, marched Thursday at picket lines near Twin Cities hospitals in a 24-hour walkout described as the largest nursing strike in U.S. history.

"I grew up in Rochester. I went to Mayo High School. My parents actually both worked at Mayo Clinic," said Elise Schwartz, of Minneapolis. She said she works on a nursing team that rotates between cardiovascular ICU, general pediatric ICU and the critical-care step-down unit at Children's Hospitals and Clinics in Minneapolis.

The strike, for nurses, is about quality patient care, Schwartz said.

But Maureen Schriner, spokeswoman for the 14 hospitals from six health systems affected by the strike, suggested strikers want to adopt rigid nurse-to-patient staffing ratios that are unproven. She said the hospitals have already achieved a high level of patient care.

"The way we want to address the staffing is to negotiate," Schriner said.

No new negotiation sessions are scheduled and the nurses went back to work today. But Schwartz said the nurses the strike was their best way to address the challenges they face daily.

Schwartz cited an example of where she was responsible for three critical pediatric patients during an entire shift. All three had high needs for monitoring and then she was alerted that a fourth patient was on the way. The situation was not good, she said.

"It's about the patients for me," Schwartz said, adding that she's frustrated if people think the strike was about money rather than patients.

She said that if the hospitals changed nothing about the contracts with nurses -- gave no raises, added no benefits and left everything the same, but did beef up the number of nurses scheduled -- she would vote in favor of the new contract.

"If they said, 'we'll give you more nurses and keep things the way they are,' I'd say fine," Schwartz said.

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Patient Safety a Hot Topic in Twin Cities Nurses StrikeOriginally from: http://www.nursinglink.monster.com/news/articles/13580-patient-safety-a-hot-topic-in-twin-cities-nurses-strike

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