The National Nurses Union has asked the D.C. Department of Health to investigate staffing issues at Washington Hospital Center, the latest push in a battle for additional nurses to be added to the hospital’s payrolls.
The union and hospital officials have been unable to agree on a new contract that the country’s largest nurses union hopes will require the hospital to hire more of its members. On Monday, the union released a 19-page report detailing problems they say plague the hospital as a result of understaffing.
Among the 19-page report were undated examples of newborn babies not being fed on time and a patient going into cardiac arrest because the nurses say he wasn’t getting enough attention.The union didn’t know whether the patient survived.
The report was delivered to the health department with a request that the agency investigate.
