Last week, WSNA Executive Director David Keepnews sent the message below to members across the state.

Just this morning, we learned that Sacred Heart executives are trying to leverage the shared calling of doctors, ARNPs, and other healthcare providers for use in the hospital’s agenda to oppose better protections for staff and patient outcomes.

One of our doctor colleagues forwarded us an email that doctors at Sacred Heart received from Providence’s Division Chief of Medicine. The best argument management seems to be able to muster in this email is that HB 1868 (Safe Staffing Standards) is “harmful,” which studies on minimum staffing standards have shown repeatedly is not the case. They also indicate the Safe Staffing Standards legislation is not “better for hospitals.”

We need to speak clearly with one voice and let our senators know what’s really going on. Please take a moment to send a letter to your senators asking them to support HB 1868 and establish safe staffing standards.

You can get more information about where the bill stands and what the hospital executives are up to in the email we’re forwarding below from WSNA leadership.

Hospital executives are showing how little respect they have for nurses, and I want to talk to you about why it’s so important that we stick together right now.

This email is a little longer than what we usually send, but it’s important. Please take the time to read it, and to talk to your colleagues and friends about what’s at stake.

Right now, many hospital executives are trying to pull you into signing a petition to stop our safe staffing bill and keep the status quo—meaning executives can keep awarding themselves massive bonuses while nurses get less support and more dangerous assignments.

The version we’ve seen looks like this—saying “keep staffing local.” That sounds nice, but what it really means is “Let management call all the shots.”

Years of understaffing have pushed nurses to the edge, and the pandemic has pushed many over it. Every day, we hear from nurses who are leaving the field or becoming travelers because of the toll from constantly being stretched thin and the moral injury from the feeling that we’re not meeting patients’ needs. There are more than 120,000 licensed RNs in Washington, but barely 60,000 who are working in nursing in Washington. There isn’t a shortage of nurses, there’s a shortage of nurses who are willing and able to keep working in these conditions.

Our staffing bill isn’t a magic wand—but it’s a powerful tool to require safe staffing levels and to hold hospitals accountable. Hospital executives are rolling out all kinds of scare tactics, but the reality is that hospitals will have plenty of time to ramp up and implement plans. There’s flexibility for small facilities and rural hospitals. And because real staffing standards will make our jobs safer and more sustainable, the requirements will help recruit and retain nurses.

I truly wish we were all on the same side. I wish the hospitals were working with us to ensure that nurses and all health care workers have safe, sustainable assignments, and that patients get the care they need and deserve. But too many hospitals have shown that they won’t do this, which is why we need to pass HB 1868.

But hospitals don’t think nurses are smart enough to know what patients need. Just last week, a hospital association executive told KNDO TV in Yakima, "Staffing is not first and second grade math, it's like AP calculus and it's like graduate level physics. It's really hard and it's really complicated."

I was stunned by that comment and the idea that nurses can’t understand staffing needs. Nurses are educated professionals. Whether or not we have graduate training in mathematics or physics, nurses have the education and expertise to know what our patients need. And we know misplaced priorities when we see them: we know that patients and health care workers need to come ahead of amassing huge margins or paying big bonuses to hospital executives.

Hospitals have had their way for years, and things have only gotten steadily worse. This crisis didn’t start with the pandemic, and it won’t end with it either. We need the legislature to act. That’s why we’re working day and night to pass HB 1868 to create statewide safe staffing standards.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I need to add one more thing. Our safe staffing bill is in front of the Senate right now, and we need to stand together as nurses to make sure it passes.

Will you please take two minutes to email your Senators and explain why we need HB 1868 to pass? They’re hearing from hospital executives, and they need to hear from us.

We’ve put together a fact sheet so you can compare the claims hospitals are making to the real situation that nurses face in the workplace. You can read more here.

Thank you for all you do—for your patients, for WSNA, and for the future of our profession.

In solidarity,