Monitor Arbitration

An arbitration over the Hospital’s failure to provide monitor nurses on telemetry floors was held on October 11th. Telemetry floors that lack a monitor RN are unsafe for several reasons: 1) The monitors sometimes fail to alarm when there is a serious arrhythmia. 2) When the beepers do alarm, there is a delay of up to 7 or 8 seconds. 3) Artifact causes the beepers to alarm every few minutes, which not only interrupts the care of patients by those carrying the beepers, but inevitably desensitizes the users to the alarm. The Hospital sought to avoid a hearing on the merits by claiming that the issue was not subject to arbitration. As a result, a hearing on the merits was delayed until early February. In the meantime, the Hospital committed to meet with the Union to review the quarterly staffing data and to schedule mediation in an effort to resolve this matter as well as ER understaffing and other outstanding nurse/patient ratio violations.

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

A staff nurse on 9 Uris received a verbal counseling for sick time despite the fact that one of the occurrences qualified as a serious health condition under FMLA. Under the law, employees cannot be disciplined for absences covered by FMLA, and the employer has an affirmative obligation to inform employees of their FMLA rights. The issue in this case is whether the employee provided the Nurse Manager with enough information to “trigger” the employer’s obligation to inquire further to determine whether the illness is FMLA qualifying.

The nurse informed Vivian Leveille that she would be under a 7-day course of antibiotic treatment. The Union maintains that this was sufficient to alert the Hospital that the illness was FMLA qualifying, and the Hospital was then obligated to inform the nurse of any paperwork requirements. The Union is in the process of grieving this discipline and will pursue other FMLA infractions.

If you are under progressive discipline, you can ensure that an occurrence is not wrongly counted against you by providing the Hospital with enough information when you call in sick to make them aware that your illness or injury may be covered by FMLA. A FMLA qualifying serious health condition is an illness, injury, impairment, or physical or mental condition that involves one or more of the following:

1. Inpatient hospital care.
2. An injury, illness, or other condition lasting more than 3 consecutive calendar days that involves continuing treatment by a health care provider. Continuing treatment includes a course of prescription medication.
3. Pregnancy.
4. A chronic serious health condition, such as severe arthritis, asthma, back injuries, cancer, colitis, serious depression, diabetes, etc.
5. A condition requiring multiple treatments to prevent a period of incapacity of more than 3 consecutive calendar days. This includes physical therapy for RSI, chemotherapy for cancer, or dialysis for kidney disease.

More information about your rights under FMLA will be provided at the annual membership meeting on November 2nd.

Layoff Update

The Hospital has closed 7 Wollman for the foreseeable future. The floor will be used by other units as they are renovated. The staff nurses from 7 Wollman have taken positions elsewhere in the Hospital.