Man pleads guilty to sexual assaults of St. Francis hospital patients
22 November 2023
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Almost 1,000 union nurses at two Wichita hospitals plan a one-day strike on Wednesday, Dec. 6. The strike will be at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis and Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph hospitals.
National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United claims there are unsafe conditions that Ascension management has failed to fix.
The Wichita nurses who belong to the union are bargaining their first union contracts. In addition to safety issues, the nurses are concerned about staffing issues.
“Management is floating nurses all over the hospital without regard to their competencies or clinical specialties,” Marvin Ruckle, RN at St. Joseph Hospital, said in a news release. “Before we unionized, a neonatal ICU nurse would be floated to work in the adult psychiatric unit, which is completely outside that RN’s area of expertise. We want to limit these unsafe floating practices and ensure that nurses are only floated to units where they have current competencies to perform the job well.”
The nurses notified the hospitals Wednesday morning that they plan to strike. It gives the hospitals time to make plans for patient care on Dec. 6.
This is the second time the nurses have held a one-day strike at the hospitals. The previous one was in June.
The union says it represents 650 nurses at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis and 300 at Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph.
KSN News has reached out to Ascension for its response to the nurses’ concerns and the planned one-day strike. We will update this story if we hear from management.