Pro-union nurses point to fired peer

By Marshall Allen

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Nurses at MountainView Hospital are poised to vote on union representation and some cite Judy Loftman’s story as a reason they want protection from management.

Administrators terminated Loftman in September after more than a decade of service and a record of mostly excellent performance evaluations.

She claims her legal rights were violated in the process. Loftman wanted to have her daughter Liliana, an attorney, with her as moral support in an important meeting with management. But when Liliana arrived with her mother, administrators denied them entrance and called security, Loftman said.

She cites a Nevada law that says workers have a right to representation during meetings with employers. Labor attorney Andrew L. Rempfer, who is not involved in the case but represents employers, said that law only applies to employees who are represented by unions.

Orsburne Stone, a nurse at the hospital, said Loftman’s experience is a primary reason he is pushing for representation by the California Nurses Association. The nurses are also protesting allegedly unsafe staffing levels, but say some of the problems boil down to a lack of respect for them and for the law.

“They need to know they can’t just run roughshod over people’s legal rights and not pay for it in some way,” Stone said.

MountainView, owned by the Tennessee-based chain Hospital Corporation of America, is one of the few nonunion hospitals in the Las Vegas area. Its 425 nurses were to vote on CNA representation this week, but the election has been delayed because nurses filed charges against the hospital with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging they have been threatened and denied the right to inform nurses about the union.

Loftman, who has another job now, says she’s speaking out because nurses need to be “treated with professionalism, respect and within the bounds of the law.”

Hospital administrators, asked to comment about Loftman’s version of events, released the following statement: “With or without a union, we have a responsibility to our patients to address individual performance issues. We have been and continue to be committed to our progressive grievance processes, which are available to every employee. Our employees don’t need to pay union dues for protection they already have.”

Loftman worked the night shift in the Intensive Care Unit and was a supervisor for about eight years. The hospital dismissed her for “unsatisfactory performance,” according to a letter. She says the story is more complicated.

Loftman’s performance reviews from 2001 to 2007 rate her an exceptional employee. In 2007 she was praised for supporting initiatives that led to a 66 percent reduction in ventilator-associated pneumonia, a hospital-based infection.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services almost decertified MountainView in October because of infection control problems. The hospital saved its certification by issuing a corrective action plan.

Starting in April 2008, with the advent of new management, Loftman says things began getting hostile at work. Loftman said she was getting berated by her supervisor, Todd Isbell, director of critical care, often in front of other nurses.

Some of that treatment can be traced to a medical error caused in part by Loftman. The patient was not injured, and in other cases such errors resulted in correction, not punishment, she said, lest nurses be discouraged from reporting errors.

But in her case, she said, Isbell told her: “I’m going to make an example out of you.”

Loftman’s June 2008 review flags her medication error and says there must be more participation by supervising nurses in preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia because it continues to “blight the ICU.”

Three months later Isbell told Loftman he needed to meet with her and a human resources representative. She said she had been reduced to tears by Isbell in previous confrontations, so she wanted her daughter along for support. Management refused and made the call to security.

Loftman said she’s never been pro-union, but the coming vote is a result of the administration’s poor treatment of nurses.

“If nursing staff was respected, valued and listened to — and if MountainView administration was held to the same high ethical standard expected of all the nursing staff — there would not be a vote taken,” she said.