Izabella Arciniega, daughter of a surgical tech nurse at Sunrise Hospital, joins healthcare workers as they protest working conditions at the hospital during “Walkout Wednesday” in front of Sunrise Hospital Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020. The Walkout Wednesday protests are organized by SEIU, Local 1107.
Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020 | 7:35 p.m.
Workers at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center say that despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic their employer doesn’t provide them with N95 masks, tells them to share respirator hoods, and makes them consider clocking in while awaiting COVID-19 test results.
Several employees, ranging from janitors to nurses, took these frustrations to the streets outside the hospital Wednesday to call attention to their work conditions as they also continue to negotiate an employment contract.
Denielle Farrow works with fragile newborns as a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit, but said she and her colleagues also float into adult wards, where they treat known COVID-19 patients.
“We’re all afraid that we’re going to bring it back to the babies,” said Farrow, who attended the late afternoon demonstration with her three young children.
She described being issued inadequate personal protective equipment, such as KN95 masks instead of the preferred N95 respirators — which are similar but held to different federal certification standards — and nurses wiping down the full-coverage hoods they wear with their self-contained powered air-purifying respirators before passing them to colleagues. Some nurses have taken to buying their own hoods, Farrow said.
Farrow’s eldest, 12-year-old Lily, held up a protest sign like about 50 other demonstrators to the honks of passing traffic on Maryland Parkway.
“They’re not getting the protection they need to be interacting with the COVID patients,” Lily said of hospital staff. “It’s not right and not safe for the babies.”
Sunrise chief executive Todd Sklamberg said the hospital follows Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rules on personal protective equipment inventory, staff masking and testing, and disputed the charges of insufficient PPE.
“At a time of a national nursing shortage during the most critical public health crisis the world is experiencing, it astounds us that the SEIU would attempt to use COVID-19 as a bargaining chip to the point of suggesting their members walk out, which would be a violation of their contract,” Sklamberg said in a statement. “We encourage the union to work with, not against, us during a time when the entire health care community should be coming together to protect and care for each other and our communities.”
Surgical tech Erika Watanabe said employees must make serious choices: If an employee thinks they might have been exposed, they must tell their employer before getting a third-party test. If they are asymptomatic, they wait for the results using paid time off or unpaid leave.
“We all show up every day to take care of these patients,” she said.
The workers, represented by Service Employees International Union Local 1107, held two demonstrations Wednesday to protest what they call “untenable” working conditions as they continue to hash out contract details with Sunrise parent company Hospital Corporation of America, discussions they have been locked in since pre-pandemic days.
The protests come as Nevada grinds through another coronavirus wave and hospitals statewide feel the weight. According to the Nevada Hospital Association, 1,513 people were being treated in hospitals statewide for COVID-19. More than 1,100 of them were in Clark County hospitals.
“I still have not received an N95 mask from HCA,” Watanabe said. “I do work with COVID patients.”
Sharon Dubreus works in environmental services, cleaning NICU equipment like the infants’ isolette beds. She said she purchased boxes of four-layer masks online, for herself and for her daughter at home.
“Every single day we leave our homes, we leave our families not knowing what we’re going to bring home to our families,” she said. She said she hasn’t been exposed to the virus, but if she feels she has she will get tested.
Farrow said she wants more staffing — nurses in the adult wards can have a workload of eight to 12 patients, which she said is too high — and more PPE.
“If a nurse can buy her own, certainly the hospital can buy more,” she said.
The SEIU local will continue its “Walk Out Wednesdays” protest campaign at Sunrise Hospital through December.
