Nurses at The Aroostook Medical Center say they are understaffed and struggling to keep up with the complex needs of hospital patients.
More than 50 TAMC nurses, family members and supporters turned out for a march through downtown Presque Isle on June 9, trying to raise awareness of concerns they have at Aroostook County’s largest hospital.
TAMC, a part of the Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, is in negotiations with the Maine State Nurses Association, the union representing the hospital’s registered nurses. While a number of tentative agreements have been reached, the nurses are still trying to seek changes that would involve hiring more nurses and raising pay.
“The medical center can’t safely staff the hospital if there aren’t enough nurses to cover all the shifts,” said Kim Cooper, a TAMC surgery nurse.
The nurses are asking TAMC to maintain staffing levels with a ratio of three high-severity hospital patients per one nurse, while the hospital has been in favor of a 5-to-1 ratio, Cooper said.
They’re also asking TAMC and Eastern Maine Healthcare to adopt the same pay levels throughout the network of hospitals.
Nurses at TAMC currently include both staff employees as well as some travel nurses, who come to work from other regions or out of state on a short-term basis. Cooper, a native of New Brunswick who has worked at TAMC for more than 20 years, said hospitals should do more to recruit nurses who remain in the community over the long term.
“We have a shortage of RNs who want to work in an acute care hospital because the conditions are so difficult,” said Cooper. The workload for hospital nurses has increased in recent years, she said, due in part to the severity of patients’ illnesses and the time that can be required to maintain new digital health records
“The beds are almost always full of acutely-ill patients,” Cooper said. “They have a lot of illnesses, so you’re not just treating the one illness that brought them in, you’re treating the whole disease process.”
Cooper said the relationship between doctors and nurses at TAMC is good, and the hospital scores average or above average on many quality measures, but she and other nurses argue that the workload is stretching nurses thin and prompting them to seek work outside of the acute care hospitals.
“Sometimes there are too many patients all at once for the nurse to be able to handle and recover. Sometimes appropriate pain medications are missed,” said Chelsea Holmes, a surgery nurse who’s worked at TAMC for three years. “Oftentimes I’m not charting [medical record data] until the end of my shift, because if I want good, appropriate patient care then I’m not at the computer.”
Karen Gonya, communications manager with TAMC, said that the hospital’s leaders believe they and the nurses will find a “mutually beneficial agreement” on the issues they’re raising, as has been in done in previous contract negotiations.
“We have guidelines in place that ensure we are appropriately staffed at all times, and those guidelines do take into account the acuity of the patients under a nurse’s care,” Gonya said.
“TAMC actively recruits new nurses to fill open positions, as well as invests in the development of local nurses through several educational programs … Our retention rate has been above the national average for the past three years. Often our nursing vacancies are the direct result of the promotion of a nurse into a new position, the growth of a new service, or retirement.”
Gonya also said that TAMC has been active in collaborating with nurses on decisions involving digital health records, safety and standard of care protocols.
