More than 500 nurses at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis have voted down a contract offer from Health Services executives. Issues in dispute include understaffing and forced overtime.
Chris Carmichael is a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit and she’s on the union (Oregon Nurses Association) negotiating team. She says they rejected the latest contract offer because nurses’ concerns are still not being addressed.
“The Oregon Health Authority came and visited and found several unsafe staffing situations and cited the hospital and those are still outstanding. They have not prepared a staffing plan that is adequate according to the law.”
Carmichael says forced overtime is taxing operating room teams and that creates serious safety issues.
“We’re a Level 2 Trauma Center. We absolutely have to have O-R nurses. We keep bumping surgeries because we don’t have people available.”
The Nurses and hospital executives now go back into federal mediation. Good Samaritan spokesman Ian Rollins says administrators are “confident they can reach an agreement that will benefit everyone, specifically staff and patients.”
