Buffalo General RN Staffing Survey Results Rudy Staffing PresentationOur last contract included Article 107: Patient Staffing Plan that stated Kaleida would staff to grid and additionally hire above and beyond grid. We are grateful to all of you who worked so hard to make that happen –signing holiday cards to Jody Lomeo, coming to town hall meetings, fighting for the law, bargaining the agreement and voting yes on the contract.
In order to ensure that we get to grid and that frontline workers are driving that process, we have been doing a variety of things based on a new CWA based BGH RN staffing committee. Representatives from each floor and unit come together to make decisions on how to hold administration accountable to their promises of better staffing.
What this team did:
– Set up a series of floor by floor meetings with administration starting in October 2016. We have ongoing efforts to get as many frontline nurses as possible to attend these meetings.
– We pushed management to hire enough nurses to staff to average daily census. This wasn’t working because the average daily census did not reflect reality.
-We made a point of letting all levels of nursing management know that the staff were working short everyday and saw no relief in site…SO
– We decided to create a simple 3 question survey about staffing and over half of the frontline nurses on the floors and units in the tower completed it. We took the results of that (as well as data from our texters) to a meeting with Kaleida’s CEO, Jody Lomeo and Kaleida CNE Cheryl Klass. 5 bedside nurses told their stories about the daily struggle of working short staffed and have a heavy patient load.
-Jody Lomeo insisted we meet with a bigger team within 48 hours to address these dire needs. We went through the floors and units inviting you, bedside nurses, to be the voice for your floors. Two days later, Site president, Chris Lane, Site CNO Rudy Jackson and many others met with 7 bedside nurses and union leadership. Kaleida agreed that the goal was to:
– Hire to full census not Average daily census.
This is a step in the right direction, but we are far from our goals in most places. Rudy hoped to be “to grid” by June.
What is the goal for your floor to be able to provide excellent care? Please decide on a responsible and respected representative from your floor to help decide how we will hold Kaleida accountable to these goals.
For results from our staffing survey – click here and information from Rudy Jackson’s presentation at the staffing meeting –click here.
It’s very important that we have representatives from each floor and unit so that your floor’s unique situation is addressed. Please speak with someone from the team, email sbuckley@cwa1168.org or emorley@cwa1168.org or call 716-639-1168 if you want to get more involved.
