CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Nurses and others staged an informational picket this morning protesting staffing levels at two state facilities on the city’s Northwest Side.
“We’re here to fight for safe staffing levels,” said Mickey Abens, a registered nurse and local officer with the Illinois Nurses Association.
She and others spent time Tuesday morning trying to get the message out that patients at the Illinois Veterans Home and the Chicago-Read Mental Health Center are being shortchanged, because there aren’t enough nurses to care for them and that nurses have to make daily decisions who needs care the most that day.
The two facilities are next to each other in the 4200 block of North Oak Park Avenue in the Dunning neighborhood.
“Veterans nursing is a calling. I mean, we are serving the people who served us in the greatest capacity that we could ever ask for and we can’t provide dignified services for them.”
Abens alleges that the last time the Illinois Nurses Association tried to talk to management at the Veterans Home, the nurses’ group was turned away.
“These nurses are working hours and hours of overtime because there’s not enough staff to care for the people like our veterans, our mental health communities," she said.
"I mean, these are the people that need us the most and we can’t even provide that care for them.”
Abens said nursing, in general, is in a crisis and that the two state facilities don’t work quickly enough to fill vacancies to allow nurses to do their jobs more safely.
In a written response, a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs said the agency is working with unions to hire, retrain and retain staff at the Veterans’ Home at Chicago.
“While healthcare personnel shortages continue to impact long term care facilities across the nation, the Veterans’ Home at Chicago has hired a team of nurses and nursing assistants, led by four nursing supervisors and five additional personnel with nursing credentials. The overall hours of care per resident, per day, has averaged well above the minimum standards required
by our federal USDVA partners. The Home has recently hired two additional RNs and continues to recruit additional staff to ensure quality care.”
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