Nurses and other caregivers from Warren General Hospital are planning to hold an informational picket today.

Members of the Warren General Hospital Professional Employees Association will picket at the hospital from 6 to 8 a.m., 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and 4 to 6 p.m., with a rally and speeches at 5 p.m.

According to a release from the association, the purpose of the event is to call attention to staffing issues inside the hospital.

“The nurses and healthcare workers at Warren General Hospital have been on the front lines of the COVID pandemic for 18 months, sacrificing their own health and endangering their families to care for their community and keep the doors of the hospital open,” according to a release from the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals.

Now, in bargaining for a new contract, hospital management has resisted the staff members’ calls to properly staff the hospital and include staffing grids in the new contract.”

“When healthcare workers have too many patients, patients don’t get the focused, attentive care they need and deserve, and staff retention suffers, further compounding the crisis,” according to the release.

“We have a law in Pennsylvania that limits the number of children who can be assigned to a childcare worker in daycare centers – why don’t sick children have the same protection?” PASNAP President Maureen May, R.N., asked. “We desperately need safe minimum staffing levels in our hospitals. When healthcare workers are routinely required to care for more patients than is safe, it’s called chronic short-staffing, and it is a crisis for both patients and staff.”

The purpose of the picket is, “to alert their community to the conditions inside the hospital and to implore management to prioritize patient safety and take immediate action to safely staff the hospital,” according to the release.