‘We’re all fighting for safe staffing:’ Wilcox Medical Center nurses rally at Hawai‘i State Capitol

Nurses of Wilcox Medical Center, the largest hospital on Kaua‘i, joined Oʻahu hospital staff during a rally at the Hawai‘i State Capitol last Saturday to demand safe nurse-to-patient ratios.

“We’re all fighting for safe staffing,” said Dianna Rodriguez, a Wilcox nurse and speaker at the rally.

Nurses from major hospitals, including The Queen’s Medical Center and Kapi‘olani Medical Center for Women and Children, also participated.

“A nurse can only take a certain number of patients … Because as you can imagine, the more patients you take on, the busier you are, the less time you have with each patient,” Rodriguez added. “Then the risk of an event that could affect your patient happens.”

Rodriguez has worked as a labor and delivery nurse for 10 years. At Wilcox, she said, her unit has been spread thin as labor and delivery nurses are assigned additional patients elsewhere in the hospital.

“You don’t want to be in a situation where you’re rushing, right? Rushing is not safe in a hospital setting,” Rodriguez said. “You need to be able to respond to emergencies. Things don’t always go as they’re always planned. You just never know what’s going to happen, especially in labor delivery. It is like an ER.”

In July, 93% of Wilcox Medical Center’s 159-member nursing team signed a petition calling for safe staffing ratios at their hospital.

“Our patients suffer, we suffer, and no one wins with chronic understaffing,” Wilcox nurse Quyen Rockwell said then.

Representatives of the Hawai‘i Nurses’ Association, the Hawai‘i Workers Center, the Sierra Club of Hawai‘i and Rep. Amy Perruso (D-46) of O‘ahu were among those scheduled to speak at Saturday’s rally.

The Hawai‘i Nurses Association began negotiations with Wilcox Medical Center on May 6, Kaua‘i Now reported last month. The contract was extended on May 31 and in July, the parties involved hoped to have a successor contract in place before the contract extension expires on Aug. 31.

But the issue of safe staffing “has escalated beyond the collective bargaining table and is now a public health crisis,” the Hawai‘i Nurses Association claimed in a statement released last Saturday.

“We care about our nurses,” Darla Sabry, Wilcox Medical Center’s chief nurse executive, said following the rally. “They are an integral part of our team at Wilcox Medical Center, and we respect their right to share their thoughts with the community.

“The safety of our patients and staff is our top priority. We are discussing new staffing resource tools to further support our nurses and medical staff,” Sabry continued. “We are working collaboratively with the union to reach an agreement for our nurses, our medical center and our community as soon as possible.”

For Rodriguez, quality health care at Wilcox is especially important, as it’s the hospital Kaua‘i residents will almost certainly go to in the event of an emergency: “It’s important that we be able to really serve the community at our best.”

Rodriguez said she is devoted to her job, despite the issues she is now working to rectify.

“The first day that I worked on labor and delivery, I was like, ‘This is why I’m doing this. I want to work here. This is amazing,’” she said. “I am so passionate about creating a safe environment and a supportive environment for somebody to come and have a baby in.

“It’s such an important moment in a person’s life to come and have a baby, and to be a part of somebody coming into the world … It’s the best, most amazing job and there’s nothing else that I would want to ever do.”