Health

Tri-City Nurses Say Emergency Department Alarmingly Understaffed

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published September 15, 2014 at 12:35 PM PDT

This story was published more than 10 years ago.

Nurses at Tri-City say they’ve sent concerns about under staffing at the hospital emergency room to management for several months, with no response.

David Bennett, senior vice president and chief of marketing at Tri-City, says the senior management have no comment until they investigate.

Brenda Ham, a nurse at Tri-City for more than 30 years and spokeswoman for the nurses’ union, says the hospital’s emergency room is too often dangerously overcrowded with patients and inadequately staffed.

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“There’s not enough equipment in the emergency rooms to monitor patients’ safely,” Ham said, “and then they are putting patients in the halls where they cannot see patients, so it’s a very unsafe situation for patients.“

Ham also said a ”float pool” of nurses — who could be called upon to work if conditions required — was disbanded recently.

The nurses' union is also calling for a third floor overflow area that was closed to be reopened. They say patients are regularly left in the emergency room for more than 23 hours and sometimes for up to three days. They want more security for patients with mental health issues.

Tri-City is a public healthcare district in North County that treats more than 90,000 patients a year. It serves patients in Oceanside, Carlsbad and Vista.

Eleven people are vying for five seats on the district’s seven-person board in November’s election, and one issue is whether the hospital can afford to remain public.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.