AUSTIN, Texas —
Nurses at Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin are demanding hospital management takes action to improve patient care.
This comes as their union continues to work toward contract negotiations.
A group of nurses hand-delivered the letter of demands to management Wednesday morning.
Nurses say they're tired of seeing things like nurses who aren't ready being pulled from their orientation to treat patients. They also say some patients are having to wait in hallways while staff prepares a room for them.
These are things they say Ascension management has the power to fix now, and the nurses want to see action taken.
"As nurses, we are, we're off today or some of the day after work. Some of these guys got up, came in on their day off to go address our administration," Ascension Seton NICU Nurse Kris Fuentes said. "It's because we want better for our patients. We want better for our community. The reason we come to work is to take care of patients, and we just want to be able to do that."
This petition comes after the nurses' one-day strike last month. About 900 nurses took part to demand things like safe staffing for better nurse-to-patient ratios.
After the strike, the nurses weren't allowed to return to work for three days. Ascension brought in temporary staff.
While they were blocked from coming back to work, some nurses say they heard reports patients didn't get the best care from the temporary staff.
"So, we heard that there was patients that were not bathed, call outs that didn't get answered. Charting was done inappropriately. And all nurses know that if you didn't chart it, you didn't do it there," Ascension Seton NICU Nurse Vanessa Villareal said. "Just makes me really sad that Ascension continues to, well, ultimately, pay these nurses a lot of money for them to give suboptimal care versus giving us a fair first contract."
Since that day, the nurses say there still hasn't been much movement with negotiations.
"So in respect to the process, I can't really talk about what happens at the bargaining table. But, you know, we still haven't come to the solution," Villareal said. "And we will continue to fight for our patients, for our community, for a fair first contract, for, you know, better city nurse-patient ratios and for nursing retention."
The nurses say once they did return to work after the strike, they felt support from patients. While they are still short-staffed, they say they will continue their fight for a fair contract.
On Tuesday, nurses also said they would be meeting again to negotiate and bargain on Friday, July 28.