Nurses strike at Kaiser's Sunset Boulevard medical center

More than 1,000 registered nurses at Kaiser Permanente’s Los Angeles Medical Center are going on strike Wednesday – the first nursing strike at the Sunset Boulevard facility in 20 years.

The 24-hour strike is designed to bring attention to an issue that the nurses care deeply about: Providing adequate staffing levels at the hospital and having protections in place so that nurses aren't assigned to care for patients whose conditions and needs are beyond their experience.

[See related stories: Minn. nurses ready to strike; Calif. nurses' strike over patient care]

“We’re striking because we’re protecting patients’ safety,” said Irma Dufelmeier, a dialysis nurse who has worked for Kaiser for 24 years. She said nurses at Los Angeles Medical Center are taking care of the sickest patients in the Kaiser system, and refuted Kaiser's claim that they are exceeding California’s staffing ratio regulations.

“They (Kaiser) are saying they provide adequate care. We believe that’s not the case,” said Ralph Cornejo, the chief spokesperson and director of the Kaiser division of the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), the union representing the registered nurses.

For example, said Cornejo, California regulations say a med/surg floor at a hospital should have a ratio of one nurse for every five patients. Kaiser officials say they have one nurse for every four patients, but Cornejo disagrees. “We want to make them (Kaiser) accountable and hold them to that,” he said.

The nurses in Kaiser’s northern California region, who are represented by the California Nurses Association, have a contract with Kaiser that establishes an effective practice for managing staffing levels, said Cornejo. He said administrators at Kaiser’s southern California region, which includes Los Angeles Medical Center, have a different management style and are refusing to put staffing level language in the contract with the nurses represented by the NUHW.

“The strike is to get the employer’s attention,” Cornejo said.

“We want to put care in a higher standard and put nurses in a better working situation,” said Dufelmeier.

By state law, the nurses’ union had to give Kaiser 10 days' advance notice of the strike so that arrangements could be made to cover patient care. Cornejo said the union notified Kaiser 15 days in advance. He said the medical center has transferred 600 of its 800 patients to other facilities in the Kaiser system.

Kaiser did not respond to requests to comment for this story.