Nurses Day Celebration

May 8, 2024, 6 -8 p.m. in the Conference Room. Refreshments will be served for all of the wonderful nurses at Astria Toppenish. Please encourage any LPNs to attend.

New Nurse Representative at ATH

In order to better balance our workload at WSNA, we occasionally need to change our nurse rep assignments. It has been an absolute honor to work with all of you and to help facilitate change. I will continue to work on current grievances.

 Carmen Garrison will be returning as your nurse representative. She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience.

You can contact Carmen at cgarrison@wsna.org or 206-575-7979, Ext. 3113 (office).

Grievances

Accruals- two grievances. One surrounds if the accrual is correct, and the other is accrual for Low Census. We are eagerly awaiting the information from the employer before a grievance meeting.

A brewing issue recently became known regarding pay when a nurse is using EIT. This has been reviewed by Cheryl Stone CHRO and she confirms that that they will not pay a nurse’s Regular Rate of Pay, instead will only pay the hourly wage. As you know, Regular Rate of Pay is defined in the CBA:

3.7 Regular Rate of Pay. The regular rate of pay shall be defined to include the nurse's hourly wage rate (Article 6), shift differential when the majority of hours worked fall in the evening or night shift (Section 7 .1 ), BSN/MSN recognition (Section 7 .5), certification pay (Section 7 .5), charge pay when the nurse is regularly assigned as charge (Section 7. 7) and the wage premium in for per diem nurses (Section 3.5).

Staffing Committee

March 27, 2024. Discussion involved the new staffing law and the revision of the charter. There was one ADO from the ED involving a high census, high intensity shifts with limited staff. The next meeting will be on May 15, 2024, at 0730. Any nurse who is interested in attending may do so.

If you have any topics for the committee, please bring to a committee member: Julia Barcott, Susie Cervantes, Clara Bucio- Martinez, Cindy Peterson, Maira Gonzalez, Kristina Thom and Kerri Sutton.

Conference Committee

April 24, 2024. Agenda items included:

• Education requirements and nurses being told to LC instead of allowing to stay and complete education.
• Completion of float check list for ACUTE CARE
• Additional orientation for BH staff when floating to ACUTE CARE
• “Mini” version of Pro-Act training for staff floating into BH. This opened the discussion for other nurses, staff to receive this training for safety and de-escalation.
• Low Census- the equitable use of LC per CBA. Alternatives could be to complete education or orient to another unit.
• Attendance Policy revision is in the works by HR-Stay tuned.
• The DAISY Award – Melissa Waggoner, CNO has been working hard to bring this outstanding program to ATH. The DAISY Award is a recognition program to celebrate and recognize nurses by collecting nominations from patients, families, and co-workers Expectation for a recipient in the fall 2024.

 
Thank you again for the honor to represent you!
 
Laurie Robinson- WNSA Nurse Rep. lrobinson@wsna.org or 206-620-4136

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