CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Nurses for Cook County Health went on a one-day strike Thursday to protest staffing shortages and the lack of a new contract.
About 1,200 nurses on strike work for Stroger Hospital on the Near West Side; Provident Hospital in Washington Park; and Cermak Health Services, which provides health care to inmates at Cook County Jail.
“Every day, we see nurses leave our hospital, because they are so frustrated with the lack of resources and their inability to provide the kind of care they are committed to giving their patients,” said Consuelo Vargas, an emergency room nurse. “When an experienced nurse walks out the door, they take with them years of skill and expertise that are critical in caring for our patients and mentoring other nurses. We must address our staffing issues in order to retain and recruit experienced nurses.”
Vargas noted that Cook County’s own staffing guidelines state there should be 35 nurses in the emergency room at Stroger Hospital at the start of each day, but on their best days they have only 30 and more often only 22 to 25.
After dealing with a pandemic for 15 months, Stroger Hospital medical surgical nurse Elizabeth Lalasz asked, “You can call us health care heroes. Why are we now zeros?”
Nurses for Cook County Health have been without a new contract since November and they said they are working with a skeletal staff and that patients suffer delayed or reduced care as a result.
“We are working with a skeletal staff throughout our hospital,” said Martese Chism, a registered nurse and board member of National Nurses Organizing Committee. “We have far too few nurses working in our hospitals and clinics and we have witnessed a reduction of services over the last 10 years that have left many patients with few – if any – options. These reductions in services mean that care is delayed or missed entirely and people become sicker and have poorer outcomes. Cook County must address our staffing crisis now.”
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Stroger nurse Bernadine Okeh, who works in the medical surgical unit, said “Staffing has been very short, like, almost at all times and that puts us and our patients at risk and we don’t want that."
Lalasz said that when not enough staff is on-hand, her stomach drops, because of the workload she and her fellow nurses will have.
“When we’re short…we can’t get to everybody. Lights are going off. People need pain medication. People have breathing problems. You can have people who are having, you know, heart problems and you can’t get to them fast enough.”
The Illinois Labor Relations Board said Tuesday that nearly 400 nurses should not be allowed to strike, because that would leave the hospitals in a dangerous situation.
Cook County Health said it has hired nurses from outside agencies to fill the gaps in the trauma and emergency departments, patient floors, and operating rooms on Thursday. Some elective and non-urgent procedures or appointments have been rescheduled, while some scheduled appointments will be accommodated via telehealth.
In a statement, Cook County Health said it has made arrangements to ensure “the continued provision of safe care for our patients.”
The statement goes on that, “Patients who have specific questions about an appointment, test or procedure scheduled for [today] should call 312-864-0200. Patients who are experiencing a medical emergency should call 911."