Tobey Hospital nurses secure contract

A new contract has been settled for the registered nurses at Tobey Hospital, one which the involved parties have spoken about favorably.

“The contract is finalized, and the Tobey RNs won significant improvements in all the areas where they needed improvements,” said Jennifer Johnson, Associate Director of Public Communications with the Massachusetts Nurses Association.

“Michele Wakeman, Associate Chief Nursing Officer at Tobey Hospital, said, “Our nurses recently voted to ratify a new contract. We believe this to be a contract where we recognized the issues that were important to our nurses and [are] very pleased that the contract has been ratified.”

Nurses with the hospital previously held an informational picket to air their grievances on Tuesday, April 30. Their concerns included understaffing and a lack of appropriate pay for their positions.

Several of their specific concerns have been addressed in the new contract.

By the terms of the new contract, Tobey Hospital will make “reasonable efforts” to ensure charge nurses do not have to take care of as many, or any, patients as they currently do.

Charge nurses oversee nursing operations, making sure that everything runs smoothly.

Registered nurses with the hospital expressed concern that traveling nurses got priority over nurses who worked full time at Tobey when it came to staffing.

The new contract states that nurses with the contract’s bargaining unit will be scheduled before traveling nurses.

Additionally, the contract states that nurses will not be regularly required to perform duties outside their roles. Registered nurses had complained that short staffing in other positions left nurses picking up additional jobs at the cost of patient care.

“I’m happy with them,” said Jared Chadwick, Wareham Select Board member and paramedic.

“I feel better with our town being more protected now with the way the contract came together,” he said.