There has been a lot of inquiry regarding eligibility to receive the COVID Shift incentive. The history behind the bonus is this. CWH administration came forward with the first draft in December. Your WSNA Nurse Representative and your Local Unit officers negotiated this MOU in good faith with the hospital administration. The hospital’s first offer was even more limited in scope including the first offer of $5/hour. We were able to agree with management for the $10/hour. We were able to get this for the ED, PCU and ICU Cohorts.

What brought us to negotiate this? There were PCU and ICU nurses who had gotten to the point of burn out. While there were issues raised by them regarding management, COVID put the “icing on the cake”. Nurses are leaving ICU in droves and the hospital administration agreed we needed to do something to retain these experienced nurses. There have now been 13 nurses who have resigned in ICU alone since the onset of this pandemic.

This incentive is not about exposure to COVID positive patients. It’s about the exhaustive amount of work in caring for these critically ill patients and the compassion fatigue these dedicated nurses are experiencing with the high volume of deaths and lengthy, prolonged admissions. These patients take a lot of time to care for, especially when they are on ventilators. The constant donning and doffing as well as proning and high acuity makes caring for these patients extremely intense. We were putting a band aid on a hemorrhaging wound.

While we were negotiating this incentive MOU, we reviewed similar ones all over the State. They are equally as narrow in their scope. So our MOU is fairly consistent. There are more hospitals that are starting to realize the impact this is overwhelmingly happening across the state and the entire USA ICU nurses.

Members have also asked about why this temporary MOU wasn’t voted on. During this COVID pandemic, the E&GW (Economic and General Welfare) Cabinet agreed that MOUs/LOUs (Memorandum of Understanding/Letter of Understanding) for COVID related incentives do not have to be voted on since we are in a crisis, timeliness and discouraging in person meetings.

If you have any questions regarding the MOU, please contact Carmen Garrison directly at cgarrison@wsna.org.

Vaccine survey
WSNA and UFCW21 are partnering with CWH. Please go to the link below and take a minute to complete this survey:

COVID Op-Ed
I encourage you all to read this Op-Ed that was written by Sally Watkins, Executive Director at WSNA, and Representative Eileen Cody (WA State 34^th Legislative district).