The Seattle-based Washington State Nurses Association, which represents more than 400 registered nurses at Providence Holy Family Hospital in north Spokane, are in mediation talks with hospital administrators over pay that they contend lags behind that of nurses at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center. 

Both hospitals are part of the Spokane-based Providence Health Care network. 

Holy Family nurses, represented by the WSNA, also have been negotiating for acceptable staffing, and for an adequate preceptorship, or mentoring program, which could potentially affect patient safety measures, says Lillie Cridland, WSNA spokeswoman.

The hospital’s nurses have been working under an extended contract since January 2014, and Cridland says talks have been productive. 

Holy Family Hospital spokeswoman Jennifer Gilcrist issued a statement from the hospital that said Providence Health Care and WSNA have been in negotiations since January, and both parties have agreed to extend the contract.  

“We are pleased with the tone, professionalism and level of cooperation both sides have demonstrated, and we remain confident that we will reach a fair outcome,” the statement says. 

The hospital declined further comment.

Neither side would disclose specific pay figures or the gap in pay between nurses at the two hospitals. 

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the average annual salary for registered nurses in Washington state was $75,350, in 2012, the most recent year for which data are available.

That’s higher than Idaho, which had an average annual RN salary, of $59,100, but its lower than the average in Oregon, which was $78,530.

In late August, during two days of mediation between the association and the hospital administration, about 100 nurses and supporters staged an informational picket, waving signs outside of the hospital, located at 5633 N. Lidgerwood. Cridland, who attended the picketing, says nurses were there on their free time.

Both parties will meet again on Sept. 16 to continue negotiations. 

“We had well over 100 people giving out information to people and coming by, including community members, raising these issues and saying this is important … it’s about patient safety,” Cridland says.  

The preceptor program that nurses are advocating to preserve provides mentorship for recently-hired nurses with one-on-one mentoring, she says.

“The preceptor is sort of like the person that coaches them for the initial training,” Cridland says. “The administration is talking about changing that.” 

Another topic in the negotiations is providing sufficient time off for nurses to rest between shifts.

In the interest of reducing nurse fatigue and burnout they contend is occurring, nurses have proposed changes to their designated rest between shifts that would incentivize the hospital to give nurses a solid block of rest time without calling them back to work during that time, Cridland says. The incentive would be an increase in pay for the callback times. Cridland says the rest is critical for nurses to recharge and be ready at the start of their next shift.

Currently, if a nurse is on call and called back to work, in many instances such time is excluded from the rest between shifts guidelines, meaning that time is still counted as rest time despite the fact that nurses are working. The nurses are pushing to remove this exemption so that rest time is uninterrupted, and the hospital has an incentive to ensure nurses get this critical time away from work, Cridland says.

She contends the hospital’s efforts to specify appropriate staffing levels in the contract was also a stumbling block. 

Cridland says nurses also are concerned that it will be harder to recruit and retain nurses at the hospital if the pay scales are lower at Holy Family Hospital than they are at Sacred Heart. 

“If you’re working at the same hospital system and one hospital is getting paid more than the other, it will probably be able to attract more nurses than the other,” she says. 

WSNA represents nurses at several health care organizations in the Spokane area, including Providence VNA Home Health Group Spokane Veterans Home, St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute, and the Spokane Regional Health District, as well as the Pullman Regional Hospital in Pullman.

More than 1,000 nurses and health care workers at Spokane-based Deaconess and Valley hospitals, part of the competing Rockwood Health System here, went on strike last December, calling for better staffing levels at those facilities. The nurses later returned to work, as the union and the hospitals continued to work on reaching an agreement.

Deaconess and Valley nurses, represented by the SEIU Healthcare 1199NW union local, which is based in the Seattle area, signed an agreement in mid-August that provided increased wages and arranged for charge nurses to call a staffing alert during periods of short staffing, the union said in a press release.