RIH patients feeling the impact of the nurses strike
By: Chloe Leshner
cleshner@abc6.com
@ChloeLeshner
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) — Some of the patients being treated at the hospitals are starting to feel the impact of the heath workers strike. Lifespan has hired temporary nurses but one patient tells ABC 6 News there aren’t enough.
Anyone sick enough to be hospitalized wants to feel taken care of by their doctors and nurses. Peter Tsonos says that wasn’t necessarily the case at Rhode Island Hospital once the nurses walked off the job.
"They wanted to see how I was swallowing food but there was no time. There was no time to do the regular things that they do for a discharge," says Tsonos, an East Providence resident.
He had been in the hospital for a week treating a throat infection. He watched as nurses we’re escorted off the floor Monday.
"They all were very upset about having to leave. My case manager came down and broke out into tears because she couldn’t take care of me the way she wanted to," he says.
Instead, he was discharged by a secretary.
"She came down to the room with some papers and said I’ve never discharged anybody before, here are your papers. I said so what do we just leave she said well I guess so I’ve never discharged anyone," says Tsonos.
Replacement nurses eventually removed his IV ports for him while he was sitting at the nurses station, the waiting room around him completely empty.
He says he’ll be okay but feels for the nurses hitting the picket line and patients left behind. He’s pleading with hospital and union leaders to remember the sick people at the center of this.
"There’s a humane way to deal with this and there’s I don’t know what this is, a business method but sit down and discuss things," he says.
ABC 6 News reached out to Lifespan for an updated comment on patient care during the strike, they have not responded yet.
(C) WLNE/ABC 6 2018
