BY ADAM ATKINSON
North Country This Week

POTSDAM — Nurses at Canton-Potsdam Hospital are struggling with high patient volumes and some say the low number of RNs covering those greater numbers of patients is a safety issue.

The situation came to a head this past week when one nurse, who is unnamed, quit work after showing up for her shift and discovering she would be one of two nurses responsible for 25 patients on the med-surge floor, says the nurses union representative.

“The hospital always says there is a nursing shortage. That’s not our problem right now. Our problem right now is that our management is not seeing what’s happening,” said Susan Creighton Quinell, the president of the New York State Nurses Association for Canton-Potsdam Hospital.

“You walk onto the floor and you’re told ‘You’re going to have 10 patients tonight,’” Quinell said.

She said the state guidelines for the number of nurses per patient is a minimum of six registered nurses per 26 patients on a day shift and five nurses per 26 patients on a night shift.

Quinell said often there are only four RNs and two travelers on a shift.

She said the situation is causing concerns regarding safety and that nurses are worried they could lose their licenses if situations caused by overpopulation get out of their control and a patient is put at risk.

Quinell said new nurses who are required to job shadow more experienced RNs who are supposed to serve as mentors for educational purposes are not getting the guidance they need. What’s worse is that they are seeing the work stress the RNs are under and opting to leave for better employment elsewhere, which invariably contributes to a shortage.

Quinell said most of the upper management of the hospital is from Rochester Regional now that the merger with the larger hospital is in play, and many don’t have the local connection either.

All of that is coupled with increasing patient volumes at CPH caused by limited care in other areas of the county. Quinell said Gouverneur Hospital is unable to do major surgeries because they lack the blood bank facilities. Massena Hospital has no intensive care unit, and no maternity ward.

“These people are traveling long distances to get care they need and we don’t have the space to take care of them. This is not how you take care of a community,” Quinell said.

In addition, there are no overtime incentives in place for nurses to work extra to help provide the proper care for the patients.

“What we see as nurses is that it’s all about how to save a dollar. It’s not about nurses,” she said.

“I’ve been employed there for 26 years with the last 13 in the operating room and I absolutely love what I do,” she said. “In 26 years I’ve never seen such negativity, and it’s not just the nurses. It’s hospital wide.”

“This is a management problem to solve,” Quinell said. “It’s dangerous because they made it that way.”

“At this point what we want is for management to address the issue and come to us with a plan and get the situation under control,” the union representative said.

A spokesperson for St. Lawrence Health told North Country This Week that hospital management does recognize there is a shortage of nurses and said that getting traveling nurses to fill in the gaps has become increasingly more difficult.

“We are currently recruiting new nurses. Furthermore, shortages are not everywhere in the hospital, but rather in select units,” said Pam Klosowski, SLH spokesperson.

“Like hospitals and health systems around the country, St. Lawrence Health is still navigating staffing challenges related to the ongoing regional and national nursing shortages,” she said.

The shortage is not expected to affect the hospital's regional care pavilion expansion project, Klosowski said. She added that the St. Lawrence Health’s nursing education program, the Isabelle Graham Heart School of Practical Nursing, is not affected by the issue either with the program already underway and recently graduating its first class.

“While we regularly meet the nurse staffing commitments and abide by New York State Staffing Guidelines, unanticipated nurse absences can briefly impact staffing levels during specific shifts. When they occur, these instances are resolved as quickly as possible,” said Klosowski.