EVERETT — Richard Phelps has spent over a month at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett with life-threatening complications after being hit by a car.
If that wasn’t stressful enough, the 1,400 nurses who provide essential care for Phelps and other patients gave the hospital a 10-day strike notice Friday night.
Nurses at Providence Everett gave the notice after what they characterized as a long, unsuccessful day of contract negotiations.
Last month, 97% of voting union members authorized a potential strike if the two sides didn’t strike a deal by Friday.
“We’re not taking a strike lightly,” nurse Kelli Johnson said Wednesday. “We understand patient concerns.”
Phelps, 67, said he supports the nurses and their right to strike. But a walkout means he would likely need to seek a transfer to a different hospital, he said.
“I’m trying to get better,” he said before Friday’s strike news. “If they don’t have the people to enable that, then I have to go.”
Patients can expect to have an “uninterrupted care experience” if nurses walk out, Providence spokesperson Erika Hermanson said.
The hospital has contracted with a staffing agency to replace registered nurses in case of a strike. Hermanson declined to provide an exact number of replacement nurses or labor costs, but said a strike would be “expensive.”
Johnson said she would not be concerned with nurses crossing the picket line. It would be a bigger concern if Providence is more willing to pay upfront costs for a nurse strike than agree to staffing language in the contract, she said.
Phelps has felt the impact of low staffing during his recovery — it can take hours to get food or have his bathroom needs met, he said.
“Nurses try very, very hard,” he said. “I can’t say enough good about the nurses, but what’s expected of them is not realistic or good patient care.”
Everett and South County firefighters have also gone public about the staffing crisis at Providence. Firefighters wait up to three hours to drop off emergency patients at Providence, said Don Huffman, a firefighter and president of the Everett Fire Department’s union.
“We 100% stand behind the nurses,” Huffman said.
At times, all Everett firefighters are tied up and can no longer respond to 911 calls, he said. Fire departments from other cities have to step in.
“Patients already can’t get care,” Huffman said. “A strike would ensure patients could get better care moving forward.”
Most, if not all, of the hospital units are understaffed, Chief Nursing Officer Michelle Lundstrom said last week. The hospital is moving toward a new staffing model to make it easier for nurses to take on more patients, she said.
Providence nurses and some experts question the proposed staffing model, saying more than four or five patients per nurse is “unsafe.”
Phelps agrees nurses have too heavy of a workload. On Wednesday morning, his wife, Lisa, found him slouched in bed with “alarmingly” low blood pressure and oxygen.
“The communication is horrible,” she said. “But it’s not the nurses’ fault.”
Phelps is now well enough to breathe without a ventilator and eat without a feeding tube. Nurses transferred him from the Intensive Care Unit to a general care floor this week.
“‘Hell’ is the best way to describe it,” he said.
The way Providence approaches staffing, he said, is “misguided” and puts profit over patients.
“There are many things that need to be worked on here,” he said. “Cutting costs is not one of them.”
Sydney Jackson: 425-339-3430; sydney.jackson@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @_sydneyajackson.
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