Nurses afraid overcrowding, understaffing at Mary Bridge NICU could lead to missed care

More and more babies are coming into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at MultiCare Mary Bridge, and nurse staffing isn’t keeping up. 

Despite an agreement the hospital reached with the Washington State Nurses Association to maintain certain minimum staffing standards in the NICU, nurses are regularly working without enough staff, and their patient loads are going up.

While nurses are doing everything they can to make sure the babies in the NICU are getting the care they need, they are at a breaking point, and MultiCare, Mary Bridge’s corporate parent, isn’t doing enough, fast enough to address the crisis. 

One nurse wrote:

“We are losing nurses faster than we can staff our unit. We keep receiving transports when we have no staff to care for them. Nurses are taking leave for their mental health. Many of us are doing doubles every shift… Someone help us. Please!”

The number of babies being cared for in Mary Bridge’s NICU is up 50% since January, and MultiCare has told nurses they expect it to go up another 20% by the end of the year. An overflow area that used to be used intermittently is now filled with babies every day.

Nurses who should be caring for 1 or 2 babies are regularly being assigned 4 – and double that when they cover for another nurse on break. On one shift, a nurse reported that two nurses had to cover for 11 patients, far over what is considered safe. 

Staffing is regularly 25-33% below agreed to standards for the current patient load in the Mary Bridge NICU.

“We’re consistently short nurses,” one nurse said. “The highest I have seen is 11 short, but it’s been consistently 7 to 9 short.”

Mary Bridge NICU nurses say MultiCare isn’t doing everything it can to ensure there are enough nurses to staff their unit, which can significantly impact patient care. To correct that failure, WSNA says the hospital must take immediate steps.

• MultiCare should hire more nurses in recognition of the growing number of infants being cared for in the NICU.
• MultiCare should bring on more travel nurses to temporarily meet the increased staffing needs in the NICU until sufficient staff nurses have been hired and trained.
• MultiCare must offer better incentives for nurses to cover open shifts. Systemwide, MultiCare capped incentive pay at a rate far below time and a half. Despite contract language that permits Mary Bridge to offer higher hourly pay to work extra shifts, MultiCare, Mary Bridge’s corporate parent, has refused to increase hourly incentive pay.

In the meantime, nurses at MultiCare Mary Bridge’s NICU don’t know how much longer this extreme level of understaffing can go on.

“If we keep going at this rate, I worry it could lead to significant patient harm,” one NICU nurse said.

Examples of texts nurses are receiving nearly every day asking for more staff.