‘Burnt out and tired’: nurses at leading California hospitals prepare to strike

Five thousand nurses at Stanford and Lucile Packard children's hospital in Stanford, California, are preparing to strike in demand of wage increases, mental health and wellness support, better healthcare benefits, and a focus on hiring and retaining nurse staff.

The union has set a strike date for 25 April.

Stanford hospital at Stanford University in California has been consistently ranked among the top hospitals in the US by US News, but nurses say high turnover rates, understaffing, and inadequate proposed wage increases and benefits have contributed to high burnout rates. In a survey of union members, 45% of nurses reporting said they intend to leave their job within the next five years.

Kathy Stormberg, a nurse in the radiology department at Stanford hospital for 19 years and vice-president of the Committee for Recognition of Nursing Achievement (Crona), blamed the strike on the hospitals' continued reliance on contractors and its policy of pushing nurses to work overtime amid staff shortages, unfilled vacancies, and difficulties retaining enough nursing staff.

"That is not sustainable," said Stormberg. "Nurses have an overwhelming sense of guilt to work overtime when they are getting texts requesting nurses to come in every four hours on their days off."

She also cited inflation, the high cost of living in the Bay area, student debt and other area hospitals providing better wages and benefits as obstacles for nurses to sustain careers at Stanford.

Nurses represented by the union voted by 93% in favor of a strike authorization as the union's contract expired on 31 March and 30 bargaining sessions over the past three months have yet to yield a tentative agreement. The union has criticized the lack of participation from nursing administrators in bargaining sessions. This would be the first time they have gone on strike since 2000.

Leading up to the strike vote, nurses have held rallies outside the hospitals to demand a new contract. The union must give a 10-day notice before walking out.

Kelli McNulty, a nurse at Stanford hospital, said that due to the inadequate health insurance benefits provided to nurses, she had to get a job at a local Amazon for a week working night shifts and then sign up for Cobra insurance in order to obtain health insurance coverage that covered fertility services.

She had a partial hysterectomy at age 27 and has been trying to bank embryos through in vitro fertilization - the only way she could have children of her own - but the health insurance coverage offered to nurses with the union doesn't cover it.

"It's mind-boggling to me that we're one of the most well-known institutions in the world and they don't even give us IVF insurance or reproductive benefits," said McNulty. "I was a little shellshocked by the fact that I worked full-time at Stanford and then I had to go live in an Econo Lodge hotel to work overnight for a week at Amazon just to get benefits."

In January 2022, a nurse on a contract at Stanford hospital walked out of their shift and killed themself, highlighting the need for better mental health and wellness support services and for improvements to the poor working conditions that nurses have faced through the Covid-19 pandemic.

"The working conditions that we have now are just no longer sustainable," said Leah McFadden, a nurse in Stanford's surgical trauma unit since October 2019. "Over the last two years, we're starting to run on empty, we aren't having a chance to decompress, or even just get away from the hospital as much as we should."

McFadden said she pays out of pocket to see a therapist to help her manage the stress of working in nursing during the pandemic. Her unit took care of Covid patients for the first 15 months of the pandemic, and has since reverted to surgical trauma, but patients' acuity has been intense given the delays in medical care many Americans faced due to pandemic restrictions and hospitals being overwhelmed with Covid patients.

"Nurses are burnt out and tired, and nurses are not only leaving the bedside nationwide, but don't necessarily want to live in this area because of how expensive it is," said McFadden. "We want the hospital to recognize that they're going to need to make some drastic changes in order to keep the nursing force that they're so proud of."

In a joint statement, a spokesperson for Stanford hospital and the Lucile Packard children's hospital said in an email:

"At Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, we believe that hard work at the negotiations table is a far better path than a strike to achieving new contracts for our nurses. We are committed, through good faith bargaining, to reach agreement on new contracts that provide nurses a highly competitive compensation package, along with proposals that further our commitment to enhancing staffing and wellness benefits for nurses. Now, as we take the necessary and precautionary steps to prepare for the possibility of a strike, we hope that Crona chooses to instead focus its efforts on working with us toward contract agreements."