10.09.2003

Department of Public Health Public Hearing
On DON for Lahey Clinic Hospital – Project # 4-3A58
Massachusetts Nurses Association Testimony
October 9, 2003

Testimony provided by:
Barbara Cooke, RN

Good morning. My name is Barbara Cooke. I am a staff nurse at Brockton Hospital and a recently elected member to the Massachusetts Nurses Association Board of Directors.

I am here tonight to echo the concerns expressed by the MNA regarding the importance of RN staffing, and particularly to highlight the importance of linking staffing issues to the introduction of an expansion or introduction of new services at any hospital.

Two years ago, my hospital was engaged in a process to obtain legislative and regulatory approval to introduce an open heart surgery program in competition with a number of facilities across the state. At the time this process was underway, I, and more than 90 percent of the nursing staff at our facility, were engaged in a 103-day strike at our facility with the principle issue being our effort to improve the chronic understaffing of nurses at our hospital.

It was shocking to us that anyone would consider awarding such a serious and sophisticated service to a facility that refused to provide its nurses with a staffing pattern and working conditions that would allow them to provide basic care, never mind care to open heart surgery patients.

While this process was going on, we made a decision to stand up and speak out publicly about our opposition to this program being awarded to our hospital, and we were quite clear in our message that no hospital should be allowed to introduce a service unless and until they have the nurses and the commitment to appropriate staffing for nurses to make that program safe.

Fortunately, the DPH made the decision to award this program to another facility. Whether or not our efforts and our lobbying for our position played a role in this decision, we will never know. But I am here to tell you it should have.

Now I don't know about the staffing conditions at the Lahey Clinic or what their plans are for staffing this new service. But I urge the Department of Public Health to take a very close look at the current staffing and at what is being proposed.

I also urge you to speak directly and confidentially with the nurses themselves, and I mean those on the frontlines to garner their honest impressions.

I have read all the research that was presented before you tonight concerning the impact nurse staffing has on patient care. As one of those nurses on the frontlines, I can speak to it personally and forcefully.

A hospital without nurses is inoperable. A hospital without appropriate RN-to-patient ratios is unsafe. When you consider this or any other application for health care services, I join my colleagues in urging you to consider those who make those services work – think about the nurses.

Thank you.