Chicago Nurses Organize for Better Working Conditions And Patient Care

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Sasha-Ann Simons** (0:27)
Hey Chicago, I'm Sasha Ann Simons, and this is In the Loop.
At the end of this podcast, stick around for a rundown of the latest news here in the Chicago area. But first, when you are sick and you've got to go to the hospital, you expect a nurse to be there when you need one, right? But a lot of nurses these days, they say staffing shortages and growing workloads are making that harder every single day. Now, healthcare workers across Chicago are organizing in record numbers for better working conditions and ultimately better patient care. It's part of a broader movement that's happening in hospitals and clinics across the country. So in this episode of the pod, we're going to hear firsthand accounts from a couple of local nurses and a journalist who's been following their efforts. At the table was Jessica Ahn, a registered nurse in the emergency department at Saint Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Ukrainian Village, Sarah Louise Dawson, who's a registered nurse in the medical intensive care unit at Rush University Medical Center, and Kristen Schorsch, WBEZ public health and politics reporter.
Now, right off the bat, I wanted to know what was the final straw that led these nurses on our panel to want to form a union. So here's Sarah Louise with her perspective.

**Sarah Louise Dawson** (1:43)
Unionizing has been something that's been important to me since I became a nurse. And I think when we decided to file the petition, we were just like, the time is now. It's now or never. This is, we've had enough of having more and more and more piled onto our plates, being asked to do more and more and more every shift with less support.
And we just decided, like, we have to do this now for the safety of ourselves and our colleagues. We're tired. I'm tired of seeing people leave the bedside every year to go and do something else because the job is just not sustainable.

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (2:15)
So doing more with less. Jessica, does that ring a bell?

**Jessica Ahn** (2:19)
Yes. Yeah, that's exactly how we felt, too.
It was something that we always considered and talked about. Even when I first started, the experienced nurses around me had also educated me on Union hospitals and what that would look like for us. And then to see those nurses leave the bedside, it just motivated me that we had to keep that momentum going.

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (2:45)
Tell me more about the specific working conditions at Saint Mary of Nazareth.

**Jessica Ahn** (2:50)
Well, currently, currently or what?

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (2:53)
Yeah.

**Jessica Ahn** (2:53)
Okay, yes. So currently, the working conditions are exactly as you described.
We have less safe staffing. The demand for the workload is still there, so high patient volume. We have less resources and support that we had before.

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (3:11)
And when you say high patient volume, tell me what that looks like for you on a shift, right? On a 12-hour shift or however your shifts are broken down. What does that mean for your night? What is your night going to look like when you see the patient load that you've got in front of you?

**Jessica Ahn** (3:24)
So when we do not have enough safe staffing, what that looks like is now there's longer wait times for patients in the waiting room.
I see that their admission times are going to take longer because now the units are feeling the same pressure upstairs. I see that although the treatment plan for the patients are initiated in the emergency department, that continued care is being delayed as far as their admission goes. And their next steps to recovery.

**Sarah Louise Dawson** (3:54)
Yeah.

**Sasha-Ann Simons** (3:55)
Talk more, Sarah Louise, about what this looks like for patient care. Yeah. How does it impact the folks coming to you for help?

**Sarah Louise Dawson** (4:01)
Totally. So I work in the ICU, so we often will get the really sick patients who end up in the emergency room. You know, people who are critically ill. And like Jessica said, we're working in different hospitals, but those ER wait times can really add up. And we know that when patients are stuck down in the ER for a long time, not that the ER pressures are not like competent and capable, but they don't have the same staffing and resources that we have up in the ICU. So for an ICU, when we're short staffed, it means often that we are feeling pressure to take more patients than is safe, which means that patients can't be watched as closely, which means that we're less able to be in the room with the patients, giving them that direct care.