HPAE Local 5131 members: Regarding Nurse Photos in rooms

Most of you know that last February, Inspira tried to push forth an initiative to place the name and photo of the nurse in each patient room. This came about as a result of a staff nurse who trialed this on one unit as part of a research project and administration thought it increased patient satisfaction. The Union immediately demanded to bargain over this and submitted a lengthy information request while you began collecting signatures of the nurses who had legitimate safety concerns.   When we met with administration in March, their position was that they were going ahead, despite the objections of our nurses, it would be a condition of employment and discipline would result for anyone who refused.

We let them know your legitimate concerns and presented over 400 signatures on a petition from our nurses. Over the next several months, we discussed this in our Labor Management meetings and came to a compromise that we believe addresses the majority of your concerns.

The photos will be placed OUTSIDE of each room under a plexiglass cover to decrease the chance that they will be stolen or copied. No identifiers, such as a badge or name will be included. It will be implemented one unit at a time to assess for unforeseen problems. The mental health units and emergency departments will be excluded due to the high risk involved. In addition, Janet Davies told us that any staff member who has a situation that they believe is a problem should bring that to their manager, and your union rep, immediately.

If our nurses had not been so vocal and stood together, there would have been no compromise from administration. But just as we expect them to compromise when we differ on an issue, we must do the same. We do believe this addresses the majority of your main concerns and we urge you to let us know if there are problems going forward.