RNs File Department of Public Health Complaints Against UC Davis Medical Center

Nurses Charge Public Endangered as Hospital Management Unlawfully Rations Nursing Care to Patients

Registered Nurses at multiple units within the University of California Davis Hospital have filed a series of Department of Public Health charges against the facility, alerting the state to what risk of public endangerment.

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee recently received new information from UC Davis outlining what nurses charge is an ongoing effort to unlawfully ration nursing care to patients in violation of the state’s safe staffing law.  UC Davis is the only UC hospital reporting these huge shortfalls in nursing care, says CNA/NNOC.

The specifics of the charges include:

• The Director of Nursing for the facility directly acknowledged repeated instances of insufficient nursing staff (according to documents available upon request)
  
  
• There was insufficient RN staffing 39 per cent of the time throughout the hospital for the month of March 2009, one of the periods covered in the documents recently turned over by UC. (627 shifts in 26 departments had insufficient numbers of RNs out of a total of 1,612 shifts hospital-wide during March 2009, where a department was considered understaffed for RNs if the shift was short at least 12 RN hours per shift per department.)   The staffing requirements are based on the portion of California’s safe nurse-to-patient ratios law that calls for units to safely staff by acuity
  
  
• Some of the departments where there was insufficient number of RNs on a regular basis include:
  • Cardiothoracic Stepdown Unit (East-6): insufficient RNs on 37 of 62 shifts
  • Orthopedics/burn overflow (Davis 14): insufficient RNs on 35 of 62 shifts
  • Pediatrics (Davis 7): insufficient RNs on 25 of 62 shifts
  • Neurosurgical ICU: insufficient RNs on 29 of 62 shifts
  • Surgical ICU 1: insufficient RNs on 7 of 62 shifts
  • Neonatal ICU (Davis 5): insufficient RNs on 57 of 62 shifts
    
    
• “This deliberate understaffing of RNs is on-going and puts patients in immediate jeopardy every shift in many departments at UCDMC due to gross understaffing of RNs,” charges CNA/NNOC in the letter delivered to the Department of Public Health.

“California’s safe RN-to-patient staffing law is designed to protect the most vulnerable among us from hospitals that ration nursing care and endanger patients.  UC Davis routinely disregards this law, exposing our patients to unacceptable levels of risk.  We are grateful that the Department of Public Health is investigating this, and we call on UC to do the right thing, and provide UC-Davis patients with the care they need,” said Geri Jenkins, RN, President of CNA/NNOC and a nurse at UC San Diego Medical Center.

“We knew something was wrong with nurse staffing levels in our unit, but we didn’t know how systemic the problem was until the numbers came from UC. Often the very ill patients we care for are denied adequate time with their nurse because UC Davis does not meet state requirements for nursing care,” added Shirley Toy, RN in the UC Davis Cardiothoracic Stepdown Unit.