Rogue Valley Medical Center will spend about $2 million to pay its nurses for rest breaks and meal breaks they missed while caring for patients and to hire new nurses to spread the workload.
RVMC and the Oregon Nurses Association have negotiated an agreement that calls for the hospital to add 27 new full-time nursing jobs and pay nurses $500,000 for breaks they missed. The nurses union filed a grievance with the hospital in 2006 when nurses said they were too overworked to take the rest breaks and lunch breaks that are specified in their contract.
"Nurses were electing to stay by the bedside rather than take a break or get some nourishment," said Randy Williams, an emergency-department nurse who helped negotiate the agreement.
The new nursing positions will be added to the busiest units of the hospital, such as critical care, intensive care, obstetrics, neonatal intensive care and the emergency department, said Jeanette Holmes, human resources manager for Asante Health System, RVMC's parent company.
Holmes said the hospital recognized the need to hire more people to ensure that nurses could get the rest breaks they need to give patients quality care. She said the new hires most likely would be a mix of full- and part-time positions that would add up to 27 full-time jobs.
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Williams said the nurses' contract gives them two 15-minute breaks on an eight-hour shift and an unpaid 30-minute lunch break. Nurses who work 12 hours are entitled to three 15-minute breaks and an unpaid 30-minute lunch. On a 12-hour shift, two of the 15-minute breaks can be combined into a second 30-minute break.
Williams said full-time RVMC nurses typically work 12-hour shifts. Nurses who missed a meal often found themselves working six or seven hours without access to food.
Mosser said the issue of missed breaks surfaced during 2005 contract negotiations and the hospital agreed to work with the union to find a solution. Negotiations intensified after the union filed a grievance.
Busy nurses have raised the issue of missed breaks in other hospitals, too. Some 1,300 union nurses in Spokane, Wash., filed a grievance against Sacred Heart Medical Center over missed breaks last summer and won an arbitration hearing. The hospital was required to pay them for missed breaks back to August 2004.
Holmes said the agreement applies to some 630 nurses who work at RVMC, including about 330 full-time nurses, 220 part-timers, and 80 on-call nurses. It does not apply to nurses at Three Rivers Community Hospital in Grants Pass, which is owned and operated by Asante.
Nurses will be compensated for lost breaks on the basis of how many hours they worked in 2006 and how long they worked at RVMC. Full-time nurses who worked the whole year will receive about $895 (before taxes) for missed breaks. Part-time and on-call nurses and those who worked less than the full year will receive less.
Nurses are in short supply nationally, so filling 27 new positions will be a challenge, said Gregg Edwards, Asante's "chief people person."
"In some regards it's difficult to fill the slots we have all the time" from regular turnover, he said.
Williams said the hospital worked with the nurses to find a staffing solution. "We came out with something good for everybody instead of standing around and complaining and feeling bad about it," he said.
The agreement "isn't a one-shot solution," said Scott Kelly, Asante's vice president for planning, marketing and business development. "We always have to look at our patient volumes (to determine staffing). If our volumes go up we'll have to add more staff."
Reporter Bill Kettler: 776-4492; e-mail: bkettler@mailtribune.com.
