Michigan AFSCME Council 25 Calls On State To Stop The Violence At Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital Before More Staff Are Hurt
Better policies needed to protect staff and improve care
DETROIT, Dec. 1, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Michigan AFSCME Council 25 is calling on the State of Michigan to institute better management policies to stop the rising tide of violence occurring at the Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital. At least 70 people working in the healthcare facility have been injured since last July.
"This hospital deals with the most difficult psychiatric care cases," said Al Garrett, president of Michigan AFSCME Council 25. "Even under ideal conditions, employees must contend with the people struggling with extreme mental disorders – some of them quite violent. The job assumes a certain amount of risk but those risks can be mitigated with proper procedures and management. Too often neither the procedures nor the high quality management are in place and healthcare workers and the people they care for daily are suffering. We need a better system at that facility.
According to media reports there have been hundreds of police runs to the hospital because of incidents of violence against staff occurring at the facility. Seventy of the 508 healthcare workers are off work or on limited duty because of job injuries. Another 40 are on paid leave.
"Our members working in healthcare deserve a state system that adopts the best psychiatric care procedures in the handling of extremely difficult, violent and mentally unstable patients," said Garrett. "When difficult situations arise, healthcare workers deserve to have due process and be treated in a fair and equitable manner. Right now, as a union, we are appalled at the way people – workers and patients - are being treated by the State Department of Community Health."
Michigan AFSCME Council 25 representatives have been meeting with management and state department officials since 2012 over the escalating violence, the decreasing number of active staff on duty and the overall care of patients. The hospital is a dangerous place to work. The State has an obligation to ensure that the environment is as safe as possible. They have repeatedly failed to do that. Employees are now working mandatory overtime on a continuous basis. As of July, of the employees who perform direct care, fifty-three were on light duty (no patient contact), 22 people are on worker's compensation and currently 40 more are out on administrative leave. The majority of those off work on worker's compensation were injured by patients. Mandatory overtime is high because employees routinely work 16 hour shifts - sometimes back to back. This needs to change.
The union wants a speedy resolve to issues related to the care of patients and the working conditions including: better staff training, separation of the most violent patients from the general patient population and better medication to control violent tendencies by patients.
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SOURCE Michigan AFSCME Council 25
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