By james art The nurses at Dignity Health St. Bernardine in San Bernardino, Calif., held an informational picket Tuesday, Oct. 29, to protest management’s refusal to address chronic staffing shortages that impact patient safety, the California Nurses Association/National Nurse of The United (CNA/NNU) . The lack of investment in staff by CommonSpirit Health, the owners and operators of St. Bernardine, leading to high turnover rates at a hospital that was already suffering from inadequate staffing during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Due to CommonSpirit’s failure to retain hospital staff, nurses have been forced to take on multiple roles outside of our assigned duties – we act as technicians, certified nursing assistants, and transport and security staff,” they said Doniel Kelosky, RN in an intensive care unit. “This is the definition of hazardous working conditions. These conditions not only compromise the physical and mental well-being of nurses, they compromise the safety of the patients entrusted to our care.
According to the 2024 ranking. CommonSpirit Health is the nation’s largest Catholic hospital chain and the second largest not-for-profit hospital chain in the United States, with net patient revenues of just under $30 billion. Because of its nonprofit status, the hospital system does not pay tens of millions of dollars in federal taxes—resources that should be plowed back into its workforce and the communities in which it operates.
“CommonSpirit has the resources to end the staffing crisis, overwork and increased levels of stress and morale distress that nurses are facing and that management has failed to adequately address,” said Simon Seyum, RN in the telemetry unit. “We called the picket line because we’re tired — tired of working nonstop, overtime, and under-resourced — while we see CommonSpirit raking in billions in revenue.”
There is no shortage of nurses, but there is a serious hospital staffing crisis, according to an NNU analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. In California, there are 166,233 RNs with active licenses who do not work at the bedside. For more information on the reasons, please read here.
The California Nurses Association represents nearly 800 RNs at St. Bernardine. The nurses at St. Bernard’s notified their employer of the October 16 information picket.