SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Kaiser Permanente employees organized three protests on Tuesday, picketing on their own time about the lack of staffing at their hospital.
Kristynn Bennett stood among them, not as an employee but as a patient.
"I was born in Kaiser, and I've been here my whole life," Bennett said.
She says Kaiser's quality of care has significantly decreased since the pandemic.
"I had a kidney infection that developed days after surgery and it took months to reach my doctor because of poor communication," Bennett said.
Nurses say poor communication has also caused problems in postpartum care. Laura Nelli says they've had to find supplemental staff to work with babies while other nurses work with new moms.
"When you're responsible for just the moms and another nurse is just for the babies, you have to find time to communicate on the floor and sometimes that just doesn't happen as busy as we've been," Nelli said.
It is not a strike, so the nurses are still showing up to work full-time. But they say they're struggling, claiming that Kaiser took most of their staff for the new San Marcos Medical Center that opened in August.
"We're not in contract negotiations. We're just letting them know: you opened a new facility and took nurses from our floor, you have to replace the nurses you took," Nelli said.
Kaiser Permanente has pushed back on these claims, saying it's a "false narrative" to say hospitals are short-staffed. They released a statement to ABC 10News, saying, in part:
All Kaiser Permanente medical centers in San Diego are fully staffed in accordance with the state of California's mandated staffing levels for nurses.
Kaiser says staff has hired more than 550 nurses this year and are working to hire hundreds more. Kaiser staff also say they're soon meeting with the local union to listen to their concerns.
