Local 5131 May Membership Update

HPAE Local 5131 Member Update

Our local held an education dinner at the start of this month to kickoff nurses’ week. Members earned 2 contact hours while they learned about violence prevention in healthcare. The instructor was Cecelia Gilligan Leto, director of NJ Work Environment Council (WEC). She provided prevention strategies and ways to identify safety system failures in our workplace. This information arms us with knowledge to keep us safer working in our current environment of short staffing and increased acuity.

Our local joined HPAE members from across the state in Trenton to push for legislation outlining nurse to patient ratios. This would make ratios a law rather than letting staffing numbers be at the discretion of healthcare facilities. Our union has been at the forefront of drafting a bill that includes the following ratios:

• 1 RN for every 5 patients on a medical/surgical unit
• 1 RN for every 4 patients in a 4 step down, telemetry, or intermediate care unit
• 1 RN for every 4 patients in an emergency department
• 1 RN for every 2 patients in a critical care service of an emergency department
• 1 RN for every 1 patient in a trauma service of an emergency department
• 1 RN for every 5 patients in a behavioral health or psychiatric unit
• 1 RN for every 2 patients in a critical care, intensive care, neonatal, or burn unit
• 1 RN for every 1 patient under anesthesia in an operating room
• 1 RN for every 2 post-anesthesia patients in a recovery room or post-anesthesia care unit
• 1 RN for every 2 patients in a labor and delivery unit
• 1 RN for every 4 patients, including infants, in a postpartum unit in which the mother and infant share the same room; and 1 RN for every 6 patients in a mothers-only unit
• 1 RN for every 4 patients in a pediatric or intermediate care nursery unit and 1 RN for every 6 patients in a well-baby nursery.

We were joined by a coalition that includes other unions and advocacy groups committed to getting this bill passed. We must keep fighting until this becomes law to keep ourselves, our patients, and communities safer.

In Solidarity,

Local 5131 Local Executive Board