{"id":399828,"date":"2026-04-27T11:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T11:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/399828\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T11:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T11:47:08","slug":"tufts-medical-center-nurses-complain-of-understaffing-in-or","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/399828\/","title":{"rendered":"Tufts Medical Center nurses complain of understaffing in OR"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 70 unionized nurses at Tufts Medical Center<\/a> have expressed no confidence in the manager who oversees operating rooms at the teaching hospital, saying she has failed to act on their complaints of a critical nursing shortage.<\/p>\n

A group of the nurses on Thursday presented the manager, Anna DaSilva, executive director of perioperative services, with a letter saying they had \u201c\u2018no confidence\u2019 in your ability to manage Tufts\u2019 OR Department safely and appropriately.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cImmediate changes are required in order to protect patients, staff, and the hospital overall,\u201d said the letter, which was signed by 74 of the 81 nurses who staff about two dozen operating rooms at the hospital. The nurse said they have complained about the situation for months.<\/p>\n

DaSilva is a registered nurse with a doctor of nursing practice degree and a master of business administration degree, according to her LinkedIn<\/a> page.<\/p>\n

The union also filed complaints with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the American College of Surgeons, the Joint Commission, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.<\/p>\n

DaSilva could not be reached for comment. Tufts spokesperson Bill Durling said in a statement that the health system is \u201cconfident in our staffing plan and nursing leadership\u201d and that \u201cpatient safety, quality, and caregiver well-being remain our highest priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that like many hospitals across the region, \u201cwe\u2019re experiencing high surgical volume\u201d and called that \u201can encouraging sign of the community\u2019s trust in our services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tufts Medicine has been trying to improve its financial picture in recent years, but it was unclear whether the alleged nursing shortage stemmed from cost-cutting efforts. Tufts reported a $58.6 million operating loss on $3 billion in revenue for the year ending September 2025. That was much better than the $250.7 million loss on $2.6 billion in revenue reported for the same period in 2024, though it also marked the health system\u2019sfourth year operating in the red.<\/p>\n

Operating room nurses say the hospital has been abusing rules that require them to stay beyond their scheduled shifts if managers need them or spend multiple hours on call in case they might need to come in.<\/p>\n

Mary Havlicek Cornacchia, an operating room nurse and co-chair of the Massachusetts Nurses Association union\u2019s local at Tufts, said that one of her colleagues had to work 38 hours of overtime in each of two weeks in March and had no option to say no. Overtime pays time and a half, she said.<\/p>\n

Another colleague worked 32 hours in regular shifts in a week but was required to be on call an additional 128 hours, Cornacchia said. Nurses get paid $10 an hour while on call outside the hospital.<\/p>\n

Cornacchia couldn\u2019t specify how many operating room nurses she believes the hospital needs to hire. But she said 10 nurses have retired or resigned in the past year and the vacancies have not been filled.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bottom line is there aren\u2019t enough staff,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, she said, the shortage hasn\u2019t affected patient care.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just that people are exhausted and there\u2019s no work-life balance,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

The operating room nurses spent several months meeting with Tufts administrators about the shortage, \u201cwith many promises made but no concrete action\u201d taken by management, David Schildmeier, a union spokesperson, said in a statement. He said the letter of no confidence was a \u201clast resort … in an attempt to prevent an inevitable tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Six years after COVID-19 swept through the country, US hospitals continue to grapple with a shortage of nurses. Many nurses who worked long hours caring for patients while trying to protect themselves subsequently left the field because of fatigue and burnout. The shortage is only expected to grow as Baby Boomers age and the need for health care grows.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jonathan.saltzman@globe.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 70 unionized nurses at Tufts Medical Center have expressed no confidence in the manager who oversees…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-399828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}