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“One day longer, one day stronger,” St. Vincent Nurse Jayne Antos said Thursday. “We’re in it to the end because patients come first.”
Nurses Michelle Stearns echoed that “one day longer” slogan, calling it the nurses’ “motto.”
“I think it made us feel more focused,” Stearns said. “Some of the nurses got riled up with the news at first, but it made them stronger.”
St. Vincent Hospital announced Wednesday evening that it was hiring permanent replacement nurses “to provide consistent support and relief to nurses who have returned to work as well as temporary replacement nurses.”
In an interview Thursday, St. Vincent CEO Carolyn Jackson noted that the move had an added benefit of reducing costs, as a permanent nurse costs less to employ than replacement nurses.
St. Vincent Hospital nurses strike in Worcester, Mass. over unsafe staffing ratios
At 6:00 a.m. on Monday, March 8, 800 nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts began an open-ended strike. This is the first strike at the hospital in 20 years by nurses. They are members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association and have been working without a contract since 2019.
St. Vincent nurses are demanding improved staffing ratios because the current ratio of 5 patients to 1 nurse on medical-surgical floors is unsafe, leading to preventable complications, injuries and deaths. Nurses want the ratio set to 4 to 1. The staffing ratio has been their main concern since contract negotiations began in November 2019.