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Op-ed: Protect nurses and the community now

by Opinion • January 22, 2021

By Cindy Gillison and Leslie Valera

We have been registered nurses for many years, 17 years combined, at Antelope Valley Hospital (AVH) in Lancaster. We, along with our fellow frontline nurses, doctors, and caregivers at the hospital, have shouldered the responsibility of caring for a community during the deadliest pandemic of our lifetime. There is no “stay home” order for us. We have been working relentlessly since Covid-19 first hit our hospital in March last year.

Still, our concerns around patient safety and nursing practice for the last ten months have been ignored by AVH management. It is unconscionable that during the deadliest pandemic in recent history, the management team has turned their back on the very nurses who are on the front lines fighting this virus.

We never thought during our nursing careers that we would experience the things we’ve seen during the pandemic. In early December, our hospital applied for a blanket waiver to violate California’s landmark safe staffing law, forcing us to take more patients than we can safely care for. We see patients struggling to cling to life and can only pray that we can keep them alive for one more day to connect with their families via video. What we need during this critical period is more staff, not less! Decades of studies have proven that patient mortality increases for each additional patient in the average hospital nurse’s workload.

Amidst the most intense surge any of us could have imagined, nurses continue to demand better working conditions but sadly, 25 RNs have been forced to leave after the hospital implemented the staffing waiver. RNs are duty bound not to accept patient assignments that are unsafe, doing so jeopardizes their licenses. Yet, AVH CEO Edward Mirzabegian, and Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris, have used the surge as an opportunity to attack frontline nurses. In a recent Antelope Valley Press article, Mayor Parris called RNs who have left the hospital due to unsafe conditions “tyrannous cowards,” accusing them of abandoning the community they are a part of. But the reality is that nurses are trying to protect our community. The day we signed up to be nurses, we were committed to caring for our patients during their most difficult moments. What we did not sign up for is to care for patients without the PPE, safe staffing, proper rest breaks, the list goes on.

AVH once called us heroes, but now the hospital administration publicly scolds nurses, blaming nurse illness for their staffing shortages. Meanwhile, the CEO has ignored the fact that approximately 100 nurses at his hospital have contracted Covid at a time when more than 80,000 health care workers in California are infected with Covid.

Last month, city of Lancaster declared a vote of no confidence in the leadership of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Mayor Parris said that the county had “failed” us. But nurses feel that the real failure is with Antelope Valley Hospital administration and Lancaster leadership.

Our hospital is at the center of the surge in Antelope Valley, an area the size of the state of Delaware. Our facility sees hundreds of Covid-19 patients from Antelope Valley on any given day. Our ICU is full. Our ER is overflowing. We have a charity setting up a field hospital in our parking lot.

Enough is enough. We call on hospital administration to actively recruit temporary and permanent staff; demand emergency assistance from Los Angeles County and the State of California; and provide a safe and respectful environment that will help retain experienced nurses who are committed to caring for our community.

About the authors: Cindy Gillison, RN, and Leslie Valera, RN, are telemetry nurses at Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster.  

Filed Under: Opinion

13 comments for "Op-ed: Protect nurses and the community now"

  1. AV Watchdog says

    January 28, 2021 at 1:25 pm

    A well thought out and researched response to the hurtful words of a failed leader:

    Parris should apologize

    This text is prompted by the AV Press article “Nurse takes exception to Parris comments”, published in the Wednesday, January 13, 2021 issue.

    The mayor’s comment, expressing disdain for nurses leaving AV Hospital (AVH) for more affluent jobs during pandemic is distasteful. I am a Lancaster resident, with a daughter Registered Nurse employed at the AVH. Her absents from the nursing staff, is due to her personal doctor excluded her from treating COVID patients, and avoid COVID exposure, due to her poor respiratory conditions.

    Within the listed article, Jennifer is exactly correct. Read article for details.

    My daughter verifies Jennifer’s statements, “that for the pay and benefits provided by the AVH, the nurses work harder than any nurses I have seen in order to help manage the caseloads.” ”Nurses at AV Hospital are lucky to get bathroom breaks, much less a lunch break.” ”AV Hospital received state-approved waivers to increase the nurse to patient ratio late last year as COVID-19 cases surged.” ”Working with COVID patients, especially those that are critically sick and dying, takes a toll on one’s mental health.” Thus, nurse “burn out” occurs.

    Mayor Parris should apologize for his uneducated unfounded comments.

    The hospital is not entirely to be blamed for COVID working conditions. As stated in my “Hospital Reimbursement” article, published in the AV Press December 9, 2020, ”The very poor County of Los Angeles reimbursement policies with regard to reimbursements to hospitals for unrecoverable service costs performed for indigent, and under insured patients adversely affects the operating finances of the hospital.” As a member of the 2019-2020 Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury, I personally investigated the non-reimbursement abuses that the Antelope Valley Hospital is absorbing. Reference, http://www.grandjury.co.la.us/gjreports.html then “Hospitals on Ventilators.”

    Gordon V. Jefferson

    Lancaster

    • Tyranneous Coward says

      February 1, 2021 at 10:54 am

      Has Rex apologized to the nurses yet after he called them tyranneous cowards? I think Rex is a tyranneous coward for not standing up to his voting block at Lancaster Baptist and telling them to quit meeting indoors to help stop the spread of the virus. If he thinks people who go out in public with Covid should be shot, you would think he would speak out against indoor gatherings.

  2. Vic says

    January 28, 2021 at 12:13 pm

    I support our nurses and reject R. Rex Parris and his hateful rhetoric. We need a real leader in Lancaster.

  3. Demented Joe says

    January 27, 2021 at 6:12 pm

    Um weren’t you guys making tic tock videos etc? Stop crying about your job. You knew the job hazards . at least you have a job.

    • Joe Shmo says

      January 27, 2021 at 9:43 pm

      We’d love to have you on board since you seem like such a “go getter”! Shadow a nurse and let us know what you think.

    • Beecee says

      January 30, 2021 at 6:20 pm

      Ya….
      Something about the nurses and the teachers doing these creepy selfish tic toc videos that would make a normal person think twice….

      Get to work!

  4. RT says

    January 26, 2021 at 6:16 pm

    And yet again no one mentions respiratory therapy. Going out with 10 ventilators and running from respiratory emergency to the next. Putting our licenses on the line. I quit this disgrace of a hospital. I’m so glad to have left. Not even nationally are we recognized. It’s the nurses managing the ventilators and respiratory emergency. Yeah right!

  5. Mary Driscoll says

    January 24, 2021 at 4:27 am

    It’s time to bring in the retired nurses and the ones that are close enough in licensing requirements like they were supposed to be doing. Bring in the reserves, bring in the federal nurses from the army, etc. Don’t blame the nurses, help the nurses. They are putting their lives at stake every day and watching people die all around them. They will suffer PTSD from this, some may die from Covid, some may die from suicide. The RNs who walked to protect their licenses were not cowards, they were doing passive resistance to show and demand that things need to be done the right way. A nurses is life is equal to any patient’s life and they have a calling from God to save many lives and we must respect their lives. We must bring in more help. No more criticism and finger pointing Rex, get your butt out of Laguna Beach and back home (maybe you are here since you did that dangerous traffic cut off the other day) and get on the phone and find out where those extra health care workers are and bring them on board. There is an online registration system for retired and close to graduating or just lapsed in license nurses somewhere online with thousands of people responding and very few actually being placed. Get on the ball with that Rex and with getting our own health department. You are building that Marriot to get tourist money and you isolated our homeless out on 60th and I by the pound and the prison, you got some ability in you to get things done. And it was not your place to release those sensitive details about those poor two children in our town to the media to draw attention to your Covid narrative either. You got your hands in the pockets of the big companies out here out on the golf course and are patting our church commune leaders on the back and driving around in your fancy sports car and living in Laguna Beach. You say you are a Christian, what would Jesus do? He would not cast stones at the nurses and he would get them the help they needed and listen and be in his HOME where he was chosen to lead and get things done. Not destroying local rescue missions cause your wife has an aversion to the homeless.

    • Van Dammit says

      January 24, 2021 at 3:52 pm

      Thank you for saying what many of us think but cannot say in public because we fear for our jobs and businesses. Rex is out of line and out of control on so many things. This is just the latest example of his bad leadership and judgment. I cannot wait until he is no longer mayor.

    • Apologize says

      January 26, 2021 at 9:45 am

      Has Rex apologized yet for calling our brave nurses ‘tyranneous cowards’? Let me guess. He has not apologized. It figures. He has yet to apologize for blaming the non shooting of a sheriff’s deputy on mentally ill people. Nor has he apologized for making the suggestion to shoot homeless people if they try to rob you. Has he apologized for pushing to put Raymond Lee Jennings behind bars for a decade only to have him let out for being found not guilty?

      • Henry says

        January 26, 2021 at 7:25 pm

        The only tyranneous coward is the phoney who lives in Laguna and parades around as mayor of Lancaster.

  6. Karen says

    January 23, 2021 at 12:45 am

    It is time to look for a new job.

    • Beecee says

      January 23, 2021 at 6:44 pm

      They’d really get along with teachers

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