Notice for Informational Picket September 8, 2010

National Nurses United Local 509 hereby gives notice to Rebecca Wiley, Director, Charlie Norwood VAMC (CNVAMC) in Augusta, GA that on September 8, 2010 the Nurses union-Local 509, plans to conduct an informational picket to be held on public property outside the 95015^th St Downtown Division (DD) of the Charlie Norwood VAMC between the hours of 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.  Staff who participate in this picket will not be on paid duty time or they will have approved leave for the period in which they participate.

This action is being taken for the following reasons:

1.     Management of the CNVAMC has failed in its fiduciary responsibility to adequately staff the inpatient nursing units by not filling vacancies in a timely manner.  The facility has had problems for over 18 months in this area and are now treating nursing staff unfairly under the guise of “we have to provide safe patient care in this emergency.”  Failure of management to wisely carry out its duties over an 18 month period does not constitute an emergency on the part of the nursing service.

2.    Management is attempting to alleviate financial mismanagement thru the use and misuse of nursing staff assignments.  To make these changes management is hiding behind 7422 regulations and abusing this authority and the authority to detail nurses.

3.     Inappropriate assignment of RNs to areas outside of their trained specialty to areas they have not been trained to work without an adequate orientation plan.  This is an abuse of management’s right to assign work and jeopardizes patient care.

4.    Excessive enforced Mandatory OT not due to real need but due to management’s refusal to hire nurses to provide adequate patient care.

5.    Excessive enforced 16 hour tours that are not for unforeseen, non-recurring emergencies as required by Public Law 111-163

6.    Failure of management at the Uptown Triage area to adequately plan staffing and inappropriate use of pulled RN staff from clinic duties unnecessarily.

7.    Inappropriate forced switching of RN tours in Blind Rehab to avoid paying rightfully earned Overtime.

8.    Reassignment and elimination of the positions of the Admission RNs from the DD Acute Care areas without proper notice.  The reassignment places undue increased workload on the Acute Care RNs and prevents timely assessment of patients as has been cited by the most recent previous JCAHO visit.

9.    Reassignment to 4D clinic and elimination of the Congestive Heart Failure Clinic RN position.  This decision puts a medically fragile veteran population at risk for increased hospital admissions and readmissions and ER visits. 

10. Reassigning RNs from legitimate duties in the Mental Health clinic area where they manage large patient loads to work part time on an in-patient units. These forced protestations will result in decreased services to the out-patient veteran and not provide meaningful respite for the inpatient workload.  This puts a fragile patient population in jeopardy.

11. Reassigning Education RNs, Clinical Leader RNs, Wound Care RN, and others from important patient care or education duties to inpatient medical surgical units part time without a meaningful respite for the inpatient workload.  This will cause the staff to have limited clinical experts to address issues in a timely manner.  This decreases patient access to such services as wound care monitoring, evaluation and treatment.