Duluth nurses from SMDC & St. Luke's hold informational picket

DULUTH - Just a week after nurses in the Twin Cities settled on a contract, nurses here in the Twin Ports find themselves negotiating their contracts. On Monday nurses from both SMDC and St. Luke’s took to the streets for an informational picket.

“Everybody in this city gets healthcare, either from this system or from that system, whether it's you or your loved one,” says Tina Hietala, an R.N. at SMDC. Nurses from both St Luke's and SMDC join forces to form a united front. “We're out here letting the public know we have a problem here in this institution, staffing is a concern,” says Hietala.

“We need more nurses, and we need to have better staffing, regulations and language in our hospitals so we have the time to take care of our patients,” says Betsy Stark, an R.N. at St. Luke’s.

More that 1,300 nurses at both hospitals are in the process of negotiating a new contract with nurse patient ratios at the forefront of their fight. “I think that's what a lot of these nurses are riled up to say, we're riled up to say this is no longer acceptable,” says Hietala.

“On any given day you can have anywhere from 4 to 7 patients for one nurse and that's just not acceptable with the acuity of patients we take in,” says Stark.

Monday's informational picket isn't just about the safety of patients, but also about the safety of nurses. “We want contractual language that says we cannot take any more patients, it is unsafe for us, it is unsafe for the patients,” says Hietala.

Darla Collver, a Registered Nurse here in Duluth says she knows all too well about "unsafe staffing." “We didn't have enough nurses on the floor so myself and a doctor had to transfer a patient,” says Collver. Collver says she was injured in the move requiring her to have shoulder surgery, “we're trying to keep our patients safe but we also want to keep staff safe.”

Both hospitals say patient care is their number one priority. “We're confident that we do have safe staffing, this is something that we do monitor every day and every shift and every floor, every unit. It's something that we take very seriously,” says SMDC Representative Kim Kaiser.

In a statement St. Luke's hospital says "we are continuing to take care of patients and provide quality care that our patients expect."

Contract negotiations for both hospitals will continue and everyone is hoping to avoid what happened down in the twin cities. Nurses from St. Luke's go back to the bargaining table on Tuesday July 13 and SMDC nurses will meet with hospital management again on July 20.