ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 24, 1996 TAG: 9611250174
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
Two nurses who helped found a local group to bring collective bargaining to Roanoke hospitals said last week they are tired of nurses being afraid to challenge hospital changes that threaten patient care.
This is the first time employees have been willing to speak publicly about union efforts and employees' concerns about changes being made by the Carilion Health System.
Lisa Vatreau, who works full time in a cardiac care unit at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, and Vickie Martin, a part-time emergency room employee at Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital, said hospital workers are afraid they will lose their jobs if they speak out.
The women, who helped organize Virginia Nurses for Change, said that Carilion has fueled employees' fear by distributing misleading material about recent union activity.
"I'm tired of people being afraid to even get information," Vatreau said last week.
Carilion distributed fliers warning employees that signing union cards would legally bind them to a union and that they could be forced to pay dues, but a spokesman in the National Labor Relations Board Regional Office in Winston-Salem, N.C., said that is not true.
Two unions have been courting Carilion employees for the past three months. The Kentucky Nurses Association, which Vatreau and Martin support, seeks to represent the registered nurses. The Service Employees International Union has been talking with all categories of Carilion employees.
Carilion is a 13-hospital system based in Roanoke and employing more than 5,000 persons systemwide. In the past two years, it has begun a major restructuring. It has cut management layers and staff and redefined jobs, and eventually will require most employees to reapply for jobs. The changes include a systemwide compensation system that resulted in pay cuts for some employees and increases for others. The company also is getting rid of employee child-care facilities at its Roanoke and Radford hospitals.
Vatreau and Martin said they are mainly concerned with the way Carilion hospitals plan to care for patients. They say the company has cut too much in that area.
Vatreau said that when she returned to her job at Roanoke Memorial in February after four years as an Army nurse she was surprised at the work pressure and the low morale.
She works in a cardiac progressive or "step-down" unit, where patients need special attention but do not require intensive care.
"On our particular unit we're running a race every day to keep up," Vatreau said. "I see my colleagues breaking down in tears on a regular basis."
Vatreau said a controversial "inpatient care model" Carilion plans to adopt is too much like "military medicine," which treats a young, fairly healthy group and not very sick patients like those who come to Roanoke Memorial.
A week ago, Carilion announced that the new patient care plan will be started in three units in Roanoke but that the remainder of the rollout of the plan will be delayed "until further notice." The company also said it would accelerate efforts to hire more nurses and even use a temporary nursing service.
The new nursing plan, which has been in place at Carilion Bedford Memorial Hospital since Oct. 21, depends on noncertified assistants to do some of what had been the duties of licensed staff.
Vatreau helped found Virginia Nurses for Change to support the organizing efforts of the Kentucky Nurses Association.
She said she'd never considered a union until recently.
"I am extremely pro-union," she said. "I think there is no other way that management will listen and hear. Nurses are the best judges of patient care. If we're one huge voice saying `This is not the way to take care of people,' management will hear."
"Without a union, it won't," she said.
Vatreau said she would like to see both unions in place - the Kentucky Nurses Association for registered nurses and the SEIU for all other employees.
Martin said she decided to speak out as an employee and a user of the Carilion system. Her father recently has been in both Roanoke Memorial and Roanoke Community hospitals, and she said she was alarmed by the lack of nursing staff to care for patients in both facilities.
"Carilion doesn't listen to nurses. We need to organize in some manner to be heard," Martin said. "If that makes me pro-union, then I am."
In recent weeks, staffing problems have plagued Carilion's Roanoke hospitals, especially Roanoke Memorial, which as a Level One trauma center handles Southwest Virginia's most severe accident cases.
On several occasions, including last week when Roanoke Memorial was low on staff, it asked emergency medical workers to bring it only the most severe cases and to take other emergency patients to its competitor, Columbia Lewis-Gale Medical Center in Salem.
Also over two days last week, seven surgical patients had to spend extra time in the recovery room because Roanoke Memorial did not have staffing to open beds for them. In a statement confirming this, Carilion said that since the recovery room is staffed around the clock, "quality patient care is maintained."
On the advice of counsel, Carilion is not commenting on union issues, a spokesperson said.
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