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A group of Osceola Regional Medical Center nurses rallied Thursday morning regarding staffing and working condition issues at the Kissimmee hospital. PHOTO/National Nurses Organizing Committee
Nurses at Osceola Regional Medical Center staged a rally Thursday to make the public aware of the conditions they continue to work in.
The rally — not a walkout, as those who demonstrated were not on-shift at that time — was organized by the National Nurses Organizing Committee.
The word from the committee is that, going on two years into the pandemic, the country is not experiencing a “nursing shortage”—only “a shortage of nurses willing to risk their licenses or the safety of their patients by working under the unsafe conditions imposed on them by profitdriven employers.”
Marissa Lee, who works in labor and delivery, turns 65 this year and has contemplated retirement, but is staying around to help her patients and co-workers through a trying time never seen in the nursing industry, even in 20 years at ORMC and 36 total in nursing.
“It’s really unsafe right now for nurses and for patients,” she said. “Many of us have abandoned bedside nursing. The issue is safety. ”
She said Thursday morning’s action was to let the community know what Lee and her cohorts are up against.
“We’re seeing more of our patients and nurses getting sick, from what they contract in the hospital,” she said.
Lee said, nurses who test positive who are asymptomatic still report for duty, and the ones who are sick at home with symptoms create a void that forces others to cover for other nurses, especially when they schedule break times.
“Having to up your patient load for just those 30 minutes creates levels of exhaustion,” Lee said. “And that’s when mistakes get made. That’s not good patient care.”
She said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) could have created stronger guidelines in the two years of the pandemic.
“Those stronger guidelines would have been a gamechanger,” Lee said.
She said HCA Healthcare, ORMC’s corporate operators, did make early plans for the pandemic — they saw it coming in January 2020 before it really took hold locally that March — but they were shortsighted and made those first decisions on a “wait and see” basis.
“We got no resolve from management, so we were forced to take this action,” Lee said of Thursday’s rally.
“In a statement from ORMC CEO David Shimp, the hospital has put in place, and kept, policies in place to practice their medicine while mitigating the virus’ spread, including universal masking for employees and visitors, providing all team members with the necessary PPE (including N95s), and complying with infection control best practices.
“Our fight against COVID is not over quite yet, and external activity like the NNU day of action will not distract from our focus of caring for our Orlando community,” the statement said. “We will continue to work tirelessly to keep our entire Osceola Regional Medical Center family safe so we can provide high-quality care to the patients and communities we serve.
“As always, we want our patients to know that we are all in this together – Osceola Regional Medical Center will remain a steadfast resource for care for our community during COVID-19 and beyond.”
Shimp said, top to bottom, the ORMC team is in it together.
“The team has been working extremely hard – both during this latest surge and for the past twoplus years as we’ve battled COVID – and we’re proud of how everyone has worked together to provide highquality care to our patients during this critical time.”
Despite the recent Omicron-inspired COVID surge, Lee said she still loves what she does.
“I get to see life come into the world every day,” she said. “I’m still dedicated to my coworkers and my patients.”
