NURSES SAY R.N. SHORTAGE RISKY AT COUNTY HOSPITALS.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

Saying Los Angeles County's public hospitals lacked 900 nurses to meet safe staffing levels last year, nurses on Wednesday faulted county inaction on a new pay scale that could help attract more to the profession and said the situation is endangering patients' lives.

``Hurricane Katrina should have been a wake-up call to L.A. County about the critical shortage of nurses in our health facilities,'' said Grace Corse, a registered nurse at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center. ``Do you think we are ready for a disaster the magnitude of Katrina? The answer is no. L.A. County is bleeding R.N.s.''

Over the past few years, the number of nurses employed by the Department of Health Services has steadily dropped to the current 5,700. Last year, the county hired 500 nurses, but 520 left county employment.

John Wallace, spokesman for the county Department of Health Services, said the state is in the middle of a nursing shortage, but the county is doing all it can to hire more nurses, including offering 10 percent bonuses to nurses going to work at Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center in the South Los Angeles area.

``We do staff to the nurse staffing-ratio laws,'' Wallace said. ``We close beds when we don't have enough nurses and do everything possible to maintain a safe environment for patients.''

The staffing-ratio law, which took effect in January 2004, reduced the number of patients per nurse.

But Jennae Arrias, a nurse at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar and steward with Service Employees International Union, Local 660, said managers at several county hospitals are pushing nurses to take more patients than the law allows.

``The patients are at risk because we don't have enough nurses,'' Arrias said.

As a result, Arrias said nurses are too busy to properly monitor all their patients, are forced to work a lot of overtime and often become so exhausted that they are at risk of making errors dispensing medications and caring for patients.

Earlier this year, nurses got a total of 6.5 percent in raises. Those with more than five years of experience got an additional 1.5 percent raise. In January, nurses will get a 2.5 percent raise, and those with more than 10 years of experience will get an additional 2 percent raise.

County officials agreed to expand the current five-step salary ladder to a 20-step salary schedule in September 2006, similar to the pay structure offered by private hospitals.

Currently, at each annual step, a nurse gets a 5.5 percent raise, but 85 percent of the nurses are at the top step. Under the 20-step system, nurses would get 2 percent raises at each annual step.

But negotiations on the plan have stalled as the county seeks to reduce the number of nurse specialties from 41 to three. That move would give the county more flexibility to assign nurses where they are most needed, but nurses say they want to work with specific populations of patients.

``If you take that incentive away from them - making them a generic nurse - why not just go to the private sector?'' asked SEIU spokesman Steve Matthews.

Troy Anderson, [phone]

troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com