Melanie Oakes said she loves her nursing job. It's mostly the variety and unpredictability she faces as an emergency nurse at Providence St. Peter Hospital, she told the Olympia city council this week.
But the hospital has frequently been over capacity since 2018, she said. When people come in for help, they often have to wait more than an hour before they can even fill out paperwork. And it can be days before some admitted patients get a proper bed or room.
Oakes said the ER has 40 beds and sees between 40 and 50 patients a day. Some patients have to be treated in the lobby. And the backup at the hospital is slowing down fire and EMS response elsewhere.
Oakes was one of several nurses who spoke during the Dec. 13 city council meeting. According to a news release from UFCW 3000, the largest union in the state, nurses from Providence Centralia and St. Peter hospitals planned to speak to Thurston and Lewis county government leaders this week about the staffing crisis in both places.
Providence St. Peter nurse Helena Smith said she and the other nurses are asking the council to draft a resolution voicing their support for all healthcare workers. And they asked the council to support the safe staffing legislation being introduced in the 2023 legislative session.
Smith said Providence needs help and those in charge in the hospital system have been slow to take action. She said staffing levels have only gotten worse since the COVID-19 pandemic, and most units are five or six people short every day. At times, she's unable to take a break during a 12-hour shift because there's nobody to cover her for 15 minutes.
She said in her 28 years of being a nurse she'd never been afraid to go to work. But now she worries every day whether they'll be adequately staffed to safely do their jobs.
Providence SW CEO responds
In an interview with The Olympian on Thursday, Providence Southwest CEO Darin Goss said hospitals around the country are facing staffing challenges, but seeing it locally has been tough. He said he's seen the good work that nurses in Centralia and Olympia are doing, and he recognizes the strain put on them with high numbers of patients and few nurses to care for them.
But Goss disagrees with the union's efforts to gain more support for the safe staffing legislation coming back to the table in January. House Bill 1868, aimed at establishing minimum staffing ratios for hospitals among other things, passed the House but failed in the Senate this year. He said there just simply aren't enough nurses in the pipeline to fill positions.
If the hospitals can't meet their staffing ratio goals, they may have to close down services, he said. That would put more pressure on the emergency department, as well as other community services such as fire and EMS response.
Instead, Goss wants to put more funding into nursing education and other healthcare jobs to get more people in line for nursing and healthcare positions.
"Nursing education is paramount in growing that," he said. "We're doing it internally, but we're going to need more help from state and federal resources."
Providence St. Peter spokesperson Chris Thomas provided specifics on where the money is going. The Providence Southwest Washington Foundation provides $150,000 a year in scholarships at Saint Martin's University in Lacey for people interested in RN and BSN nursing programs. The foundation also provides $45,000 a year to South Puget Sound and Centralia community colleges for nursing scholarships and grants for equipment.
At Centralia College, the foundation created a $50,000 nursing scholarship endowment, which has been running for more than 10 years.
Goss also plans to lobby for creating more post-acute care settings, such as skilled nursing facilities for long-term care. He said there are about 75 patients between the two hospitals who need this type of care, but beds are not available. Being able to move them along would clear up beds in the hospital, he said.
Goss said Washington state has strict guardianship rules compared to other states. Without a guardian to sign someone out of the hospital, there's a lengthy legal process to discharge them. The hope is to increase the number of guardian options to help vulnerable patients make those decisions.
Goss also wants to continue to invest in salaries to keep people paid well and interested in healthcare work.
He said that with a nationwide staffing shortage, more chances for travel nurses have popped up. And with that, salaries for travel nurses have increased and become more competitive. He said he feels the Washington hospitals are as competitive as they can be, but they're continuing to look at partner agencies and travel nurse opportunities to bring more nurses to the region.
