“We have been bargaining with the union since January and have reached agreement on most of the outstanding contract issues,” the hospital said. “Contrary to what the union is alleging, no nurse at our hospital is ever assigned to care for a patient whom they are not qualified to treat.”“I was hit in the face with a patient’s cell phone,” said Smith, who has been a registered nurse at the facility for 35 years. “She hit me as hard as she could and knocked me to the ground.
Garfield acknowledged that the nationwide nursing shortage has impacted virtually every hospital, including Garfield, but said it has made “great strides” in hiring nurses by offering generous sign-on bonuses and holding multiple job fairs.Jennifer Huynh, an ER nurse at Garfield, said she’s sometimes forced to provide longer-term care for patients because of chronic understaffing.
“My specialty is to treat people coming into the ER,” the 32-year-old Alhambra resident said recently. “But they will sometimes end up staying for several days because there aren’t enough nurses and nursing assistants. My job is not specialized in taking care of patients for that long.” Garfield said the union has rejected its proposed salary increase totaling nearly 21% over three years, which it says is competitive with salaries at similar hospitals in the area.
That proposed raise, the hospital said, would increase the average annual salary of a full-time nurse from around $102,700 to approximately $125,500 over the three-year period.
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