Hello Overlake Nurses,

As you know, there are many things going on. Here are the highlights.

• The Governor’s Vaccine Mandate: we are bargaining with Overlake over implementation of this mandate based on your concerns and feedback. The mandate is, essentially, law in Washington and Overlake must abide by it. Overlake still has a legal obligation to bargain with the Union over the effects of this mandate.
• Staffing remains at crisis levels across hospitals and our biggest concern.
• Staffing committee is an opportunity to voice and shape the solutions to staffing.
• ED has been denied N95s and are using plain surgical masks despite the known risks from prescreened patients for COVID transmission.

Vaccine Mandate Ramifications:

WSNA and Overlake met Thursday, Aug. 26, to discuss the roll out and ramifications of the COVID 19 Vaccine Mandate which is effectively law as of Oct. 18. Prior to this bargaining session, we held virtual townhalls and had conversations with nurses. Overlake has explained its exemption process via email; exemption forms should be accessible in OARs if not now, shortly. The timeline on when to expect answers on your personal exemptions will depend largely on how many they get and how soon they are filed.

COVID vaccine mandate: what you need to know:

• Exemption requests are available.
• Make sure you are taking steps to get the vaccine or get an exemption as soon as possible.
• Overlake has committed to follow up on exceptions requests as quickly as possible with an intent to keep the information as private as possible. You *do not* need to discuss a medical exemption request with your manager. Follow directions on OARS to submit your request.
• Overlake and WSNA want to keep all nurses working within the confines of the law.
• Under the Mandate, Overlake nurses need to be “fully vaccinated” by October 18. That means you need to have be at least two weeks past the last vaccine in the series by October 18. So, you need to have had the second Pfizer or Moderna shot, or the first Johnson & Johnson shot, no later than October 4 in order to be compliant.

ED, CCU and overall staffing:

Staffing concerns are still at the top of everyone’s list. ED is consistently running 5 plus short with censuses above what they are budgeted for. The CCU has been diverted because of volume. If there are nurses who are not compliant with the mandate, this will most likely have an effect on staffing, but we don’t have a good grasp on the scope or how to mitigate it. Overlake said they will share more information as to how many nurses are fully vaccinated now, or who will be by October 18, as it becomes available. The point is that things are tight. Some of the things WSNA recommends include:

• Slowing or stopping elective procedures per the Dec. 3 Governor’s mandate to keep beds and nurses open for admits.
• Taking volunteers from other units to help board ICU and med/surg patients to offload CCU and ED.
• Get the clinical educators to start this cross training on EDs charting system.
• Using the new infusion suite on W3 to run the monoclonal antibodies that are increasing the already dire pressure on the ED.
• Retention and shift incentives.
• Getting more travelers.

This list is not exhaustive by any means and it is up to the hospital to review and operationalize. Please make sure Overlake’s leaders are communicating their plans to you. Let us know how we can advocate for these or the other solutions you all have.

Staffing Committee and ADOs:

Related to the above, the influx of ADOs has been a big help in getting Overlake to move on some of our requests, however they have also overwhelmed staffing committee. We need WSNA members to volunteer from every unit to take part. Please get in touch with Zach Seikel WSNA Organizer at zseikel@wsna.org to get you plugged in.

Respirators in the ED:

ED nurses have been denied N95s despite multiple asks for this needed PPE. While they have access to some PAPRs, they are impractical for codes and triaging because of their noise, weight and time to don and doff. The CNO directed us to the PPE committee. The PPE committee said they will start fit testing mother/baby and surgical services, but have no plans or authority to give N95s to ED. PPE Committee said they cannot confirm people are getting exposed while triaging, therefore N95s aren’t needed. Per the CDC’s coronavirus recommendations, anyone caring for a patient with or suspected of having COVID should be using respiratory level equipment or higher. Overlake has 320,000 N95 masks, so many that it had to rent an off-campus space to store them all. They are using so few that they have not even calculated a burn rate as the previous mandates call for.

The CDC standard of care for caring for patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 is a N95 mask or higher level respirator, which includes a PAPR. Full stop. The people who made the decision to use less than CDC recommendations are David Knoepfler, Claire Jai, and Peter Hashisaki. Please reach out to them and ask them to explain why they are providing less than recommended PPE during a pandemic in a staffing crisis. Your Union leaders certainly will continue to do so.


CDC PPE guidelines:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/infection-control-recommendations.html#source-control

Platitudes and conclusions:

Protect your license, file an ADO: https://www.wsna.org/ado
Reasons to file an ADO: https://www.wsna.org/union/ado

If you had MOT, file an L&I complaint: https://secure.lni.wa.gov/wagecomplaint/#/

If you have patient safety concerns, file a DOH Complaint: https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/ComplaintIntakeForm.aspx

Please contact our WSNA Nurse Rep Sam Scholl for anything at sscholl@wsna.org. They are out of office from 8/27-9/8. Terri Willaims will cover if you need assistance in that time frame. You can contact Terri at twilliams@wsna.org.

Please let our WSNA Organizer Zach Seikel (zseikel@wsna.org) know if you want to be more involved.

If you are not already, please consider becoming a member. It is always a bad time to ask and always important to join. Get more information at https://www.wsna.org/membership/application/union