An “overwhelming” majority of the 800 registered nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester voted to strike Wednesday night.
This comes after they say the Dallas-based company that owns the hospital, Tenet Healthcare, repeatedly overlooked more than 500 official reports detailing “conditions that have jeopardized the safety of their patients, cast an overwhelming vote of no confidence in their CEO, and watched more than 100 nurses leave the facility due to the untenable conditions and a punitive management culture.”
“As nurses, we are legally and morally obligated to advocate for our patients to ensure they are safe and receive the care they deserve. We have tried for months to convince our administration and the Tenet corporation to provide us with the resources we need to keep the public safe, yet they only make things worse,” Marlena Pellegrino, RN, a frontline nurse at the hospital and co-chair of the nurses local bargaining unit with the Massachusetts Nurses Association wrote in a statement. “While our goal is to avert a strike, should Tenet maintain its obstinance at the table, we will be compelled to take that step because our patients’ lives are on the line.”
According to a release issued by the Massachusetts Nursing Association, Tenet announced that they made $414 million in profits.
They said this report comes as nurses report their patients in Worcester are experiencing a dramatic increase in patient falls, an increase in patients suffering from preventable bedsores, dangerous delays in patients receiving needed medications and other treatments – all due to lack of appropriate staffing, excessive patient assignments, and cuts to valuable support staff.
The vote comes as the parties are scheduled to resume talks with a federal mediator on Thursday.
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