FREMONT
? Nurses?
request for an independent probe into the hospital?s reception to a stillborn
death last year that led in the dismissal of four nurses.
After the Wednesday?s board meeting, board member William Nicholson
said, "I don't know what an independent assessment would do for this
process."
Nearly
20 hospital nurses went to the meeting in which leaders from two hospital
unions informed board members that the hospital strikes against employees.
The
nurses' union disclosed that the relationship among the nurses and
administration have crumbled after the Fremont hospital responded swiftly to a
stillborn birth last May, dismissing four nurses and sending away several more.
A current
postmortem examination report on the baby established no apparent manifest of inappropriate
care in connection to the circumstance, while
a state investigation is ongoing.
Nancy
Farber, the hospital CEO, who happens to be absent from the meeting due to
illness, had a roughed out statement read damning a Bay Area News Group story last week regarding the medical examiner's findings.
Farber
wrote: "None of us should be tempted to embrace the morally or ethically
bankrupt position advanced in the local paper that everything is OK because the
coroner said so."
Farber also attacked the nurses' union for not readying timely resentments
for the terminated nurses and said the hospital had no alternative but to lay
off three nurses charged of illicitly looking at the mother's medical record.
The
nurses' union published a member survey indicating that 70 percent of Washington Hospital nurses worry reprisal for accounting
a problem at the hospital.
Tim
Jenkins, the California Nurses Association labor representative, expressed to
the board, "Do nurses feel safe in making complaints to improve patient
care? The answer is no."
A Washington nurse named
Lisa Bates narrated to board members that administrators last year addressed
nurses, warning and threatening them with retaliation if they attended a board
meeting to dissent the hospital's reaction to the stillborn death.
Both
Bates and Nick Steinmeier of the Engineers and Scientists of California union, recounted
to board members that hospital security officers, as of late, tailed union
leaders who were passing out fliers concerning retaliation at the hospital, and
demanded recipients to hand the fliers to them.
According
to Steinmeier, as what he had related to the board, it's against the law for
security officers to keep union representatives under surveillance. "And
it's even further against the law for them to then confiscate materials that
they pass out," he added.
Only
three of the five elected board members were present during last Wednesday's meeting.
Board members Bernard Stewart and Pat Danielson refused to reply to questions
after the meeting, giving in to Farber's prepared statement.
A Washington cardiologist known
as Nicholson, shook his head when inquired if retaliation from management was a
concern at the hospital.