When the Trump administration fired 2,000 probationary staff on the Division of Veterans Affairs earlier this yr, frontline well being care staff had been spared from the president’s cuts. However Ann Marie Patterson-Powell stated she and different VA nurses nonetheless felt the consequences of the layoffs.
Medical provides grew to become tougher to trace down in her oncology unit on the VA hospital in Durham, North Carolina, Patterson-Powell stated. So she ended up going flooring to flooring searching for blood-pressure cuffs, urinals, alcohol swabs and gauze. Nurses additionally had to assist ship meal trays to sufferers’ rooms, one thing usually performed by the meals service group, she stated.
Patterson-Powell was nonetheless there doing her job — she was simply doing different duties, too.
“It took time away from our patient care,” stated Patterson-Powell, a VA nurse for 16 years who can also be a union consultant. “The time that I could be passing out meds or doing some type of assessment, or any type of treatment with my patient, I’m having to pass out [food] trays because the person who usually does it is no longer available.”
“When you lay off support staff, our jobs get harder,” she stated.
Many of the fired probationary staff have returned to their jobs, not less than quickly, because of a court docket order in March. The VA didn’t reply to questions from HuffPost about these layoffs — together with whether or not staff on the provides and meals service groups in Durham had been amongst them — or any upcoming ones.
However additional cuts loom on the VA and different federal businesses, with the Trump administration placing collectively “reduction-in-force” plans and lots of staff opting to resign. The VA, which supplies well being care and advantages to tens of millions of veterans, may minimize round 80,000 of its roughly 470,000 staff within the mass layoff, in accordance with an company memo from March.
“You can’t cut 80,000 staff and not cut care.”
– Irma Westmoreland, VA nurse and union chief
Trump’s VA secretary, former GOP Congressman Doug Collins, has tried to supply assurances that “mission critical” workers like medical doctors and registered nurses gained’t be hit with layoffs, and due to this fact affected person care gained’t deteriorate. However those that witnessed the preliminary firings — and the next resignations, as some staff search safer jobs — stated there’s no strategy to preserve the identical degree of care with fewer our bodies.
“We know it’s going to affect our patients, and he [Collins] is sitting here saying that it’s not,” stated Irma Westmoreland, a nurse on the Norwood VA Medical Middle in Augusta, Georgia. “We know it’s going to affect all of us. You can’t cut 80,000 staff and not cut care and not cut benefits.”
Like Patterson-Powell and different VA nurses quoted on this story, Westmoreland can also be an official with Nationwide Nurses United, a union that represents nurses at a number of VA services, and was solely snug talking on the document as a result of her union protections.
If layoffs come to VA well being care services, nurses may find yourself squeezed as a result of nature of their jobs. They’re the purpose of contact who sufferers and households usually flip to first after they want absolutely anything, whether or not it’s treatment, an replace from the physician’s notes, a visit to the lavatory or a heat blanket. The VA is the biggest employer of nurses and nursing assistants within the nation, with 120,000 on its rolls. Round 1 in 8 of the company’s nurses are veterans themselves.
Robert Malosh, a VA biomedical engineer and the president of his native union, stated some staff are already having to select up further duties as a result of administration’s “deferred resignation program,” wherein staff may resign and nonetheless be paid via September. His union represents smaller satellite tv for pc clinics in Michigan, the place he stated they misplaced 18 staff who selected to take what was billed as a “buyout.”
“Paying people to not work — we don’t understand it,” stated Malosh, whose union, American Federation of Authorities Staff Native 2092, represents round 3,000 staff.
In interviews, VA nurses stated lots of their coworkers are contemplating leaving the federal authorities to work for personal suppliers. Medical doctors and nurses had been usually not eligible for the deferred resignation program, however some are nonetheless contemplating exiting now due to low morale and the expectation their jobs will solely get tougher.
Beverly Simpson, an an infection management nurse, stated she took a pay minimize 11 years in the past to go away a personal hospital system and are available to the VA middle in Martinsburg, West Virginia, the identical hospital she accompanied her stepfather to when she was a toddler. She felt drawn by the job safety, the sturdy retirement advantages and the assure of well-funded look after sufferers — all of which now appear in jeopardy.
“It used to be the goal, because it was just excellent as a nurse to work for the VA,” Simpson stated. “That’s completely changed. You’re under so much stress with all these executive orders, not knowing if your coworkers will be here tomorrow.”
BRYAN DOZIER through Getty Pictures
One of many orders President Donald Trump signed goals to finish collective bargaining rights for as much as one million federal staff underneath the shaky authorized justification of “national security.” The order covers VA nurses though they serve no actual nationwide safety operate, not less than that they know of.
“What do I have to do with national security?” Patterson-Powell stated. “I take care of my patients. They come in, they need chemotherapy, I make sure they get it. … Is that national security? It doesn’t feel that way to me.”
A federal decide initially blocked the coverage from taking impact, however an appeals court docket later allowed the administration to maneuver ahead with it because the underlying lawsuit is litigated. If the administration succeeds in having union contracts thrown out, it could turn out to be a lot simpler to fireside federal staff with out due course of.
Simpson warned it could in the end degrade VA well being care by stopping nurses from talking up in sufferers’ curiosity.
“We’d have no recourse to stand up to management when they’re doing things incorrectly,” she stated.
Heather Fallon, an emergency room nurse at a VA hospital outdoors Chicago, stated she got here to the VA two years in the past largely due to the company’s assets.
“These cuts have already happened in the private sector. That’s why a lot of us have ended up at VA,” stated Fallon, who’s been a nurse for 19 years. “It is a coveted place to work. And if we’re losing those benefits… losing the ability to safely care for our patients … then people aren’t going to work there the way they’ve wanted to in the past.”
Staff throughout the VA are involved concerning the company’s potential to draw new staff within the present local weather.
“These cuts have already happened in the private sector. That’s why a lot of us have ended up at VA.”
– Heather Fallon, VA nurse and union official
One VA surgeon stated it has “always been a bit difficult” to entice surgeons to come back to the company since many can earn extra in non-public observe. Few promising younger medical doctors would wish to begin a profession on the VA underneath the Trump-era confusion and uncertainty, he stated. He’s relieved he solely works on the company half time.
“I could always pivot to my private practice, but I would feel a lot of existential dread if I was full time at the VA,” stated the surgeon, who requested to talk anonymously for concern of retaliation. “What it feels like is that, without saying this, this is all an attempt to merely degrade the VA until it ceases to exist. … It is difficult to picture a future in which the VA thrives.”
A VA social employee stated they in all probability would have give up already in the event that they weren’t so anxious about two explicit veterans of their caseload.
“I’ve got to be honest — I already have a pension and a good bit of money in [the thrift savings plan],” they stated, referring to the federal government retirement plan. “I’ve been looking. I put my resume out. I’m thinking about maybe looking for a counseling job at a university.”
The VA is paying the federal government’s human assets workplace greater than $700,000 to assist plan the company’s discount in drive, in accordance with stories. The layoffs are blocked for now, however the administration may transfer forward with them rapidly if a court docket order is lifted. Even when a prolonged court docket battle follows, many staff are prone to transfer on to new jobs or retirement earlier than the case is resolved.
And those that survive the cuts won’t stick round so long as they’d deliberate.
Patterson-Powell, who’s 61, stated she would in all probability give up now if she had 20 years of service, however she nonetheless has 4 to go earlier than she will be able to gather a direct retirement profit.
“We love what we do, and we want to make sure our veterans get the best care that’s possible,” she stated. “For folks like me who did not serve in the military, this is my chance to give back. This is my service to those who served. I know I’m committed to doing that, but right now it’s hard.”
