RNs Blast UC Irvine Med Center for Firings, Suspensions - Nurses Say UCI Targeting RNs in Response to its Scandals

The scandal-ridden University of California Irvine Medical Center has fired 13 registered nurses and now put a key nurse leader on investigatory leave for standing up for her colleagues, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee said today.

CNA/NNOC demanded the hospital reverse the firings and suspensions, end its campaign of harassment of nurses, and allow nurses to perform their critical role as patient advocates without fear of intimidation or threats.

In the past four months, UCI has engaged in what Beth Kean, UC division director for CNA/NNOC calls a “firing frenzy” – firing more RNs than all the other medical centers combined, even though UCI is the smallest hospital in the UC system.

All were fired for at most minor technical infractions or errors in judgment that did not affect patients. Many were veteran UCI RNs with many years of experience.

Then this week, UCI put a key nurse leader, Lilliam Triana, RN, on investigatory leave for investigating one of the terminations, a case where one of Triana’s colleagues was fired after she reported a serious medication problem in the UCI newborn nursery.

“UCI has been desperately searching for scapegoats and as a result has been firing nurses,” Kean charged. “If they want to clean house, they ought to be targeting their management offices, not the bedside.”

“The public deserves the reassurance that UCI’s nurses are able to fulfill their role as patient advocates and challenge unsafe patient practices without fear of losing their job or facing other threats and intimidation,” said Geri Jenkins, RN, a UC San Diego nurse and a member of the CNA/NNOC Council of Presidents.

“UCI is creating an atmosphere of dread that is unhealthy for the nurse and that is damaging to an environment of healing that is essential for quality patient care. Nurses know that their colleagues are being targeted for minor or non-existent mistakes, and that, if they blow the whistle, or stand up for their patients or colleagues, they could be next,” said Jenkins.

Notably the string of firings began during the period when UCI was involved in legal actions stemming from the latest in a string of scandals involving the medical center, this one involving its transplant program.

In July, UCI agreed to a $7.5 million settlement of 35 cases of families of UCI patients who died while waiting for organ transplants at a time when willing donors were being rejected. After media exposure, the transplant program lost its certification and was shut down.

In addition to seeking to shift blame to the RNs, charged Kean, UCI management “also wants to intimidate nurses from fighting to correct other systemic patient care problems at the hospitals, including persistent violations of California’s safe RN staffing law, improper medication dosages, and inadequate supplies needed for proper patient care.”

Along with reinstatement of the RNs and stopping its campaign of harassment, CNA/NNOC is calling on UCI management to meet to address the chronic staffing and medication problems, said Kean.

“What the UCI administration apparently fails to understand is that their RNs are the very people who are crucial to the hospital’s chance of salvaging their battered reputation. Harassing nurses and threatening whistleblowers is hardly the type of action that will restore public confidence in the hospital,” said Kean.