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SRMC union holds public forum with lieutenant governor as more claims of retaliation arise
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The day before the United Health Professionals of New Mexico and Sandoval Regional Medical Center were set to go to the table for the first time to negotiate for a collective bargaining unit, the union held a round table/community forum at The Hub with Lt. Governor Howie Morales and several nurses from SRMC.
At one point, union representatives asked for recognition for all the nurses who work at SRMC. At least a dozen individuals, some in their scrubs, stood up to be recognized. Several said they and their patients are victim to staffing issues at the hospital.
One nurse from SRMC, an RN named Gigi Regusis, spoke publicly about her experience at the hospital.
"I started there in 2016, and over the past eight years there has been a definite decline, I believe, in our patient care," she said. "We're having problems with staffing, employee morale and we're having a hard time retaining people."
Regusis says most hospitals are having similar issues but claims that if nurses speak out about the problems at SRMC, they usually catch some kind of retaliation.
"It's scary and, frankly I'm disappointed, dismayed that our administration would do something like that," she said.
At the end of the day, Regusis just wants the hospital where she works to be better and says she hopes the union can help.
Regina McGinnis, a physical therapist at SRMC, is also feeling the repercussions of staffing issues in her department.
"Because of our short-staffed situation in rehab, what it means for our patients is, if you have an elective surgery, your evaluation from a physical therapist might be delayed and the number of treatments you get might be shortened," she said. "We don't have enough staff to see patients at the frequency they need. So we're working with a skeleton crew."
She says they do the best they can with the staff they do have. For her, the union and SRMC negotiations are necessary.
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"I'm hoping that when we go to the negotiation table that they will be receptive to hearing our ideas and our proposals to make our working conditions better and make it favorable for employees, too," she said.
While nurses and medical staff are part of bargaining unit, SRMC has fought the union on the inclusion of PRNs — Latin for "pro re nata," or "as the need arises" — as members of the unit. SRMC PRN Meisha Hunt says she is one of the employees that SRMC doesn't consider staff.
"I'm one of those employees that people say shouldn't count. I'm one of those people that they say my voice and current concerns don't matter, that maybe I'm lesser because I'm PRN because I'm not part of the staff," she said. "I have to say that couldn't be further from the truth."
She went on to say that she cares "all the time" about staff, patients and her community. She added that she has worked alongside some of the most qualified people in her time as a nurse.
She says PRNs and nurses in general are there to hold each other up and added that when full-time nurses can't be there, they step up.
The audience at The Hub didn't just hear from nurses, though. A patient who had a health-threatening experience at the hospital tied her experience directly to the staffing issues at the hospital.
"I would not wish my experience on anyone," Carol Goode said.
She said she was not well taken care of because her care was in the hands of traveling nurses for "what should have been routine surgery."
"That experience turned into a horrible journey that left me fighting for my life and suffering from PTSD," she said.
Goode went on to say she was often left sitting in "her own filth" and felt like her voice wasn't heard because the traveling care was detached from empathy for her as a patient.
As Morales listened to each of the speakers, his face became grave. He shared with the group that he was once a hospital administrator, which made the claims of the problems at SRMC that much more important to him.
"My job specifically as a hospital administrator wasn't necessarily to go along with what administration had said. My job was to be the pulse of that hospital and to recognize that I had to look at things through the lens of a patient, through the lens of the community, through the lens of the staff and to recognize that it was my job to push back when I felt they weren't getting a fair share, when patient-centered care wasn't being approached or we weren't doing all that we could to take care of our professionals," he said.
Morales says he has heard some of the complaints coming out of SRMC.
"When you have constant turnover, when you have shortages that are taking place, when you have threats that are going out to staff members who are speaking out, I have to stand up and I have to be a voice to make sure that I am here to be a part of the discussion and to recognize that we cannot have high-quality care delivered without high-quality people, and you can't have high-quality people doing the work without having a high-quality system," he said.
State Rep.Kathleen Cates also spoke, reminding those in attendance of her past ties to unions. She stressed that unions make work environments better.
"It's just a pretty building without all of you in it," she said to the nurses.
County Commissioner Katherine Bruch recalled her and other commissioners' work throughout the years and explained that people's tax dollars were going toward the hospital through the mill levy, which was not voted for by the community last year.
"It is so frustrating to think that patient care is suffering, that workplace safety is at risk, that every one of the nurses or staff working there are not being taken care of," she said.
New claims of retaliation
UHPNM announced Sept. 17, before the public event with Morales, that two more nurses were allegedly disciplined by SRMC for speaking out about concerns with hospital conditions and the situation with the union.
According to a release from Shane Youtz, the union's lawyer, Samantha Hines, an emergency room RN, was given a three-day suspension on what the union called trumped-up charges. She has spoken out publicly about poor quality patient healing and working conditions. Previously, the hospital threatened her with termination, according to the union. Jennifer Heckwine, also an emergency room RN, was put on administrative leave for reporting that she had been repeatedly harassed and told that if she wants to continue to work at UNM SRMC, she must find a new position outside of the emergency room.
"It's disappointing. We're going to fight every single retaliation as hard as we can, but they really are going after people," he said at the round table event.
UNM Health Sciences Communications says no such retaliation has occurred.
"We are disappointed AFT union’s leadership continues its unfounded attacks on the eve before we meet to bargain. UNM Hospital policy is to not comment on specific personnel matters. That being said, UNM Hospital denies that it has engaged in any act that could be construed as retaliation against any of its employees for engaging in protected activity. On the contrary, we train and encourage our teams to speak out if they see any concerns or problems. We fundamentally believe that we can achieve the highest quality of care when our teams at every level of the organization feel empowered to use their voice," UNM Health Sciences Communications Department stated in an email to the Observer.
However, Youtz says the retaliation is obvious.
"They have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to prevent the union from coming into the workplace," he added. "They don't want the union and they've demonstrated that they're willing to break the rules to beat the union."
Youtz says the union still intends to bargain and the next steps are to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement beginning Sept. 18, when the two organizations are set to go to the table as required by a judge's ruling.
