Registered nurses at Eastern Maine Medical Center will hold a vote on Thursday and Friday to authorize their bargaining team to call a strike if their serious concerns about patient safety are not resolved, the Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee announces recently. The nurses express worry over EMMC’s refusal to address key patient safety provisions, including most urgently the issue of safe staffing. MSNA expects an overwhelming “yes” vote and will announce results Friday evening.

The contract between the RNs and EMMC expires September 30th, and a key sticking point in its renewal has been the hospital’s refusal to bring patient safety policies up to national standards. As patient advocates, nurses are ethically obligated to advocate for such policies and be involved in their creation through professional practice committees. A key concern that needs to be addressed is understaffing, or the overloading of too many patients per nurse.

“For the good of our patients, we need an effective vehicle to address staffing and patient safety problems. The current system is not working. We need a practice committee made up of staff nurses that has some real authority in order to provide effective care for our patients,” said Judy Brown, an RN at EMMC and President of MSNA/Unit 1.

Darlene McGarrigle, an RN in the ICU at EMMC, added: “The other night a patient needed more intensive care than what we were able to provide due to a lack of staff. We had empty beds in the facility for patients–but not enough staff to care for them. We urgently need better staffing at EMMC.”