At 350 signers!!!! Keeps clicking, signing and sharing so we can use our numbers to our advantage to make change.  See the article below from VT Digger!

BURLINGTON — Megan Martin said she felt safer when she was deployed to Afghanistan than when she’s working at the emergency department at the University of Vermont Medical Center.

“There are days that I go to work and feel more in danger for my own body than when I was deployed in the Middle East as a flight nurse,” she said at a press conference held by nurses Thursday across from the hospital where they work.

Martin and two other nurses said violence has been escalating in the emergency department, and called out what they characterized as a lack of action by hospital administrators, Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George, police and the state.

"We are here today because we’ve been using our voices and bodies to fight for a safer department for you and for us, and we don’t seem to be getting heard by the admin,” said Amanda Young, 45, an emergency department nurse for 13 years. “We’re hoping now the community will hear our pleas and know that we are here working hard to keep you safe, but we are tired and we need you to join our voices now.”

The hospital administration acknowledges it’s a problem. “You know, they’re right. It’s totally unacceptable,” hospital spokesperson Annie Mackin said in an interview Thursday.

George said she spoke with the nurses for an hour after she heard her name had been mentioned at the press conference. 

“I was shocked and really, really concerned about what I was hearing,” she said. “I can only speak to my office and what I told them was that if we get particular cases that involve body-slamming staff, strangling staff, punching staff, head-butting staff, we will take those cases seriously. And if they’re being told that we’re not, that they have to call me and ask me directly,” she said. 

According to a press release sent Wednesday by the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, 98% of nurses report being verbally assaulted and 78% said that they have been physically assaulted in the past year. 

The UVM Health Network responded with a press release soon after, acknowledging the “acute impacts” of a troubling national trend and calling for community action to deal with the rising levels of violence reported by health care workers.

Meanwhile, the emergency department is bleeding staff, literally and figuratively, nurses said. Because of the escalating violence, some of their colleagues are leaving or stepping back from being full-time nurses.

Martin, a forensic nurse who has worked at University of Vermont Medical Center for four years and in emergency medicine for 14, is among them. There were rules, accountability and support in the military, she said, but as an emergency department nurse, “I often feel alone.”

Martin has given her notice and plans instead to work as a school nurse, she said.

A few months ago, registered nurse Eisha Lichtenstein, 31, said she saw a staff member “body-slammed at running speed by a man more than twice her size” as she shielded a small child.

Lichtenstein said she understands nursing is a tough profession, but “I did not expect this level of violence, nor do I feel prepared to protect myself on the day that it heads in my direction.”

While they have repeatedly brought up these issues to the administration, the nurses said, they feel nothing has been done to make their workplace safer. They have called for tighter security, including using a metal detector that now lies unused, having more than two security officers and an armed officer 24/7, a weapons removal and storage procedure and better lighting outside.

“It is unacceptable, unconscionable for our administration to learn of the countless injuries, to hear our pleas, and not do everything within their power to protect us,” said Lichtenstein, who transferred to the emergency department from inpatient nursing more than a year ago.

Emergency Department nurse Eisha Lichtenstein speaks about workplace violence at the University of Vermont Medical Center ED during a press conference in Burlington on Thursday, June 16. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Mackin said there are two security officers in the emergency department during the day, and three overnight. Campuswide, the hospital is looking to hire eight more to get to the 36 they consider fully staffed.

She said several security jobs have already been posted and the hospital has been trying to find a trained operator for the metal detector for a while, but has been told there’s a year’s wait. Given staffing difficulties, “we are doing what we can within the realities of what we’re facing, but it's really tough right now,” she said.

Mackin said the medical center’s president and chief operating officer, Dr. Stephen Leffler, is “extremely concerned about it. He’s losing sleep over it.” She added, “We are taking steps and doing what we can.”

George said she is directing her staff of 14 attorneys to alert her to cases involving health care workers so she can handle them personally. She also said she has shared her contact information with the nurses so they can contact her directly. George said she did so after a nurse told her she’d been involved in one such case that went nowhere. 

“I just did not know how bad and unsafe it was for them there,” she said. “​​My mother, brother and sister-in-law are all nurses at Dartmouth Hitchcock. I am very committed to that profession. I care deeply about that work and I want to make sure that an already incredibly difficult job is not made harder because of the way I’m doing things.”

Deb Snell, an intensive care nurse and vice president of the nurses’ union, said the safety demands are now a part of collective bargaining talks. “It’s horrible that we have to bargain over keeping people safe,” she said after the press conference. “We’re seeing this everywhere, but the ED is unfortunately the frontline of workplace violence.”

The Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems reported that it hears a lot of these complaints, and the organization is working with hospital leaders, community service providers, state officials and law enforcement to address the problem.

“Our objective is to ensure our communities get the care they need in a safe environment. Unfortunately, we are experiencing a growing number of workplace violence incidences in our hospitals,” the association's interim president and CEO, Mike Del Trecco, said in a statement. “This is happening in hospitals large and small across the country and it is totally unacceptable.”