APRIL, 2010

As we are experiencing this Hot Spring weather, the Blizzard of 2010 is just a foggy memory for most of us. Although we would like to forget that horrendous winter we had, NAGE remains concern with the preparedness of VAMHCS in handling an emergency and disaster.

NAGE was flooded with many calls and complaints from our nurses on how the situation was handled by management during the Blizzard. NAGE decided to request a meeting with management which was held on March 12,2010. The Deputies for the Chief Nurse Executive met with a group of nurses.

Many issues were raised by the nurses such as lack of accommodations, limited transportation to bring the nurses in ,lack of food, rudeness and unprofessionalism of the NOD, disorganized staffing of the unit, disparity of treatment to nurses in regards to granting leave compare to other hospital employees and generally the overall concerns that this VA was not prepared at all although the weather forecasts indicated the upcoming blizzard. Management’s response was disheartening to NAGE and to our Collective Bargaining members.

Joint Commission Emergency Management Standard EM.02.02.07 comes to play with this situation.The standard sets a variety of provisions on how a hospital manages staff roles and responsibilities during a disaster.The idea is that an organization and its staff must be able to adapt from normal routines when dealing with an emergency. Another Joint Commission standard requires hospital to annually review the findings of their “ Hazard Vulnerability Analysis”. This analysis weighs the risks of a given emergency against the likelihood of it happening, and then ranks the resulting consequences.

Per request of the VAMHCS Director, NAGE sent him a memo outlining the concerns of the nurses that was discussed in the March meeting with Nursing Service. NAGE is waiting for management’s response outlining their position in improving the VAMHCS Preparedness for emergency.

Evelyn