being absorbed by AHN<\/a>, extends these ratios to its other, nonunion hospital in Sewickley.<\/p>\nService Employees International Union Healthcare Pennsylvania represents nurses at West Penn, Heritage Valley Beaver and Allegheny General Hospital, which all have specific staffing levels in their contracts, as well as Magee.<\/p>\n
The limits at Heritage Valley allow nurses to feel more comfortable with their assignments, according to Linda Homyk, the system\u2019s chief nursing officer. The trade-off: Patients in the emergency department sometimes must wait longer than before for an inpatient room so the hospital can maintain proper ratios.<\/p>\n
Classroom solution<\/p>\n
Hospital administrators, recognizing ongoing staffing challenges, are looking to education for a solution.<\/p>\n
Waltenbaugh, the AHN administrator, cited a record enrollment of 355 full-time students at the system\u2019s nursing schools, with locations at West Penn and the Pittsburgh Mills mall. She also pointed to a new part-time nursing school program with evening and weekend courses.<\/p>\n
A rising number of graduates helped AHN hire more than 1,000 nurses last year and reduce vacancies on its 6,000-member nursing team.<\/p>\n
UPMC has found similar success, boasting an enrollment of 1,024 at its six nursing schools across Pennsylvania \u2014 a 56% increase since 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve done a lot of work in the last several years to really increase our pipelines of nurses \u2014 growing our own schools of nursing, working with our academic partners to make sure we\u2019re doing everything possible to promote nursing as a desirable career,\u201d said Lloyd, the UPMC vice president. <\/p>\n
UPMC said just under 6% of its registered nurse positions are unfilled.<\/p>\n
Most of the hospital-run programs award nursing diplomas in two years or less, making them attractive ways to cover staffing shortfalls versus traditional four-year bachelor\u2019s programs.<\/p>\n
Duquesne University School of Nursing Dean Mary Ellen Smith Glasgow acknowledged fast-track approaches are needed to get more nurses to patients\u2019 bedsides.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we all want safe staffing, but if we don\u2019t have nurses, I don\u2019t know how we\u2019re going to have safe staffing,\u201d Glasgow said. \u201cYou can\u2019t penalize hospitals if the nurses aren\u2019t there or the faculty aren\u2019t there to teach them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keeping nurses in the field will take a fundamental shift in working conditions, according to Reich, the Pennsylvania State Nurses Association leader. <\/p>\n
He likens the staffing situation to a leaky bucket: No matter how many new nurses get dumped in, they\u2019ll eventually fall out of the bottom without tolerable workloads. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf a business is looking at that high a turnover rate, they would look at what they\u2019re doing, not necessarily complain they don\u2019t have enough applicants for that job,\u201d Reich said. <\/p>\n
Running out the clock <\/p>\n
In 2023, Pennsylvania\u2019s Patient Safety Act cleared the state House in resounding and bipartisan fashion. Mandatory patient-to-nurse ratios looked possible, to the shock of many. <\/p>\n
It certainly stunned hospitals, Reich said. <\/p>\n
He recalled how the industry sprang into action with lobbying efforts and a statewide texting campaign that warned of hospitals closing and patients going without care under a ratio system. <\/p>\n
The bill never made it out of committee in the state Senate. <\/p>\n
Under pressure from hospitals, senators \u201cran out the clock,\u201d said the bill\u2019s prime sponsor, state Rep. Thomas Mehaffie III, R-Dauphin County. The experience made it clear to him nothing would change until nursing and hospital associations agreed on staffing solutions. <\/p>\n
Mehaffie believes elected officials will have to force them to hash it out. <\/p>\n
For now, the momentum behind statewide ratios has stalled. It\u2019s not an easy law to get passed \u2014 only California and Oregon have legally mandated ratios across all units and specialties. <\/p>\n
\u2018A seat at the table\u2019<\/p>\n
Union contract talks have become the more likely forum for nurses to secure ratios. <\/p>\n
Some of the newly unionized nurses at Magee are hoping for ratios in their first contracts, claiming unmanageable patient loads are repelling new hires and exhausting veteran nurses (UPMC says it has lower-than-average turnover and vacancy rates at Magee).<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot of us realized our priorities were never going to align with UPMC\u2019s priorities unless we had a seat at the table,\u201d said Grieco, the Magee nurse.<\/p>\n
State Rep. Arvind Venkat, D-McCandless, sees collective bargaining as the best way to set ratios. His experience as an emergency physician, where the number of patients and the severity of their conditions can swing wildly, has led him to believe a state mandate would be too rigid.<\/p>\n
He was one of two House Democrats to vote against the Patient Safety Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I do support is these types of negotiations happening at the hospital level,\u201d Venkat said. \u201cWe need to do far more to support the ability of nurses to organize and unionize.\u201d<\/p>\n
This legislative session, Pennsylvania lawmakers have turned their attention toward solutions on the education side, more in line with hospitals\u2019 theories of how to boost nursing ranks.<\/p>\n
Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s proposed budget includes a $5 million investment to create the Nurse Shortage Assistance Program. The initiative would cover tuition for students who agree to work at a Pennsylvania hospital for three years after graduation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know this model of tuition assistance works,\u201d Shapiro said when the program was pitched in March. \u201cAnd for the first time ever, we are proposing to help nursing students with an investment of state dollars that not only gives them peace of mind but creates a pipeline of new, highly trained nurses for our communities.\u201d <\/p>\n
State legislators have yet to pass a budget, which is more than three months overdue.<\/p>\n
The drive to care<\/p>\n
Nurses may have their beliefs about how hospitals and lawmakers can best support them, but most will take any help they can get toward improving patient care. <\/p>\n
Angie Noel, 40, of Penn Hills finds her job much more fulfilling at Allegheny General Hospital since the nurses union and management agreed to set ratios in 2023.<\/p>\n
She also recognizes the challenges hospitals face in finding staff, including in her telemetry unit, where a large portion of patients are recovering from a heart attack or stroke.<\/p>\n
Noel worked as a teacher, baker and cosmetologist before becoming a nurse four years ago. Standing by the hospital on Pittsburgh\u2019s North Side before a recent shift, Noel said a common theme runs through each of those jobs: taking care of people.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things they teach us in school is, it\u2019s not just the medicine. It\u2019s about being able to listen to your patients when they\u2019re crying and they\u2019re upset, helping them process difficult emotions,\u201d Noel said. \u201cWhen we\u2019re actually adequately staffed, it\u2019s amazing the things we can get done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jack Troy is a TribLive reporter covering business and health care. A Pittsburgh native, he joined the Trib in January 2024 after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh. He can be reached at jtroy@triblive.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some days, Ashley Grieco feels behind the moment she steps into the neonatal intensive care unit at UPMC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-236952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}