Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - As veterans, local officials and others continue to share their concerns over the ongoing allegations of mistreatment to veterans at the Buffalo VA Medical Center on Bailey Avenue, nurses are also voicing their displeasure over other pressing matters at facilities nationwide.
Nurses with the National Nurses United and the National Nurses Organizing Committee have been holding a week of solidarity across the nation to send a message to the U.S. government to lift a hiring freeze for nurses at VA facilities.
Edie Nesbitt is a registered nurse in the intensive care unit at the Buffalo VA Medical Center, and is also with the National Nurses Organizing Committee, representing nurses at the VA. She says the influx of veterans coming into the hospital cannot be properly met with the current number of nurses on staff at this time.
"We have a lot of veterans coming in, especially with the PACT Act, and you can't have more veterans coming in and less staff," said Nesbit while appearing on WBEN on Thursday.
"If a nurse leave their position, they determine whether or not they're going to fill that position. It's a long process, and a lot of them, they have said, 'No, we're not going to fill these positions.' I'll give you an example: If a nurse normally takes care of five patients and provides excellent care to our veterans, which we absolutely do provide excellent care to our veterans, but now the nurse has seven or eight patients, you're not going to be able to provide the same quality care that we're used to providing to our veterans."
Nesbitt has worked at the Buffalo VA Medical Center for 21 years. She says while the main issue at hand is the hiring freeze for new nurses, there is a pay disparity that also should be highlighted.
"When I started at the VA, we had a class that was eight hours long on how to treat a veteran. That's how important it was. They wanted us to know how our veterans should be treated. Once you put a freeze on hiring, and at the time when the freeze on hiring was implemented, we were already down nurses," Nesbitt noted. "If you think about it, if you have a pay disparity and now you don't have enough staff, it's going to lead to more distress with our nurses. It's going to lead to moral distress, and our nurses are going to be put in situations where you are torn, because you are used to being able to provide excellent care to our veterans. Giving them the time they need, sitting with their families, talking with their family. Because we have a unique population, we get to know our veterans, we get to know their families. And now you're putting us in a position where we can't provide that care they used to. We may not have that time to sit and talk to them, we may not have that time to explain things to the family like we normally do."
One of Nesbitt's main worries with VA facilities is eventually, something bad is going to happen if nurses and veterans are continuing to be put in unsafe situations.
However, Nesbitt is not putting the blame for the hiring freeze on the administration of the hospitals.
"It's Congress' failure. Congress does our budget. Our budget that we're on now was done two years ago. Our VA Secretary asked Congress for an extra $12 billion because of the increase, influx of our veterans. And Congress did not approve our budget. They went on early vacation," Nesbitt explained. "So you know the rules are made one place, but the consequences end up at another spot.
"People in the government that sit in high places make decisions that affect people in lower places. You can't sacrifice the care of our veterans. These are people who selflessly put their lives in danger to keep us safe when we didn't know we were unsafe. You can't put a price on their life. You can't put a price on their care. They took care of us, and the government needs to take care of them. That's why all across the 50 states, all of our union members this week, we're standing in solidarity to tell the government, 'Knock it off, and give our veterans and our nurses what they deserve.'"
The simple message from Nesbitt with all this is the government needs to take care not just the nurses, but also take care of the veterans who took care of the country.
As for the facility itself in Buffalo, while it is an older hospital, Nesbitt does not feel it is prohibiting nurses from providing the best possible care for veterans.
"It's an old building, but throughout the years, they have remodeled just about each nursing unit there," she said. "Would they like to probably move into a more cost efficient building? I mean, over the years, they've had to redo the wiring in the ICU and different stuff like that. It's an old building. I mean, you could either continue to keep updating this building, or you can start from scratch and build something more efficient. But as far as stopping us from doing our job, absolutely not.
"Our Buffalo VA, they take care our facility, and they definitely try to take care of our veterans. We do have some disagreements with management about how they take care of our nurses, but the reason we're sounding the alarm now is because we know what the end result is when you decrease staff and increase patients. You bring more veterans, but you have less people to take care of them. Somewhere along the line, something bad is going to happen. So we're trying to get way ahead of it before something bad really happens."
Related
Nurses at the Buffalo VA Medical Center will be holding a protest outside the facility on Friday at 2 p.m. ET as part of the nationwide push from nurses for the federal government to lift the hiring freeze in place.