It says a lot about the work environment at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center when a registered nurse who runs an innocuous Instagram page is so afraid of retaliation from management that she feels the need to hide her identity.
The nurse who started the page called dhmc_memes about a year ago recently spoke with valley news editor Nora Doyle-Burr on the condition that her name not be used.
In ways that are sometimes witty and often humorous, the account combines humorous images and words to create Instagram posts that those in charge at Dartmouth Health, the huge health system of which DHMC is the flagship, probably won’t find funny.
The page has more than 2,700 followers, hundreds of whom have joined since the July 23 story on the Valley News. The nurse scoffs at the internal memos and chides DHMC for serving food from the cafeteria that “could give you food poisoning.” Dartmouth Health CEO Joanne Conroy, who apparently travels around DHMC’s sprawling Lebanon campus on a Segway-style scooter, has also been lampooned.
I don’t blame the part-time satirist behind the meme page for wanting to remain anonymous.
Dartmouth Health has a policy that prohibits its 13,000 employees from speaking publicly about the workplace unless they get permission from the organization’s marketing and communications office.
The policy also states that someone from the media relations staff “will attend all interviews.” If it is a telephone interview, the DH media relations professional will be listening.
I’m surprised Conroy and Co. doesn’t require base employees to sign a loyalty oath.
DH commanders are obsessed with protecting their new “brand,” launched in April that has led to reams of marketing money being spent to attract new patients in southern New Hampshire, where DH has spent heavily on bricks and mortar. Meanwhile, Upper Valley hospitals and clinics often lack the staff to provide timely care to the patients they already have.
Fortunately, there are nearby examples of similarly sized medical centers where workers don’t have to follow company rules to collect a paycheck.
The University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington is one of those places.
Last summer, when there was growing concern among UVM nurses that staffing shortages were affecting quality of care, they turned to social media to let the outside world know what was going on inside the hospital. They did not hesitate to use their names and have their photos appear on a nursing website.
“Our patients deserve efficient care where safety and quality are not compromised because one person must do the work of two,” RN Stephanie Lusk wrote.
Why do UVM Medical Center nurses feel comfortable speaking publicly?
Perhaps because in 2002, registered nurses at the state’s largest hospital voted to form a union. The Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, part of the AFL-CIO, currently represents about 2,000 nurses and 600 UVM technicians.
Nurses pay 1% of their annual salary in union dues, and seem to get their money’s worth. Earlier this month, the union and the medical center agreed to a new contract that gives nurses a 20% pay raise for two years.
“This is about fairness,” said union president Deb Snell, a registered nurse in the hospital’s intensive care unit. “Without a union, you are on your own.”
Nurses, or anyone else, shouldn’t have their pay determined by whether “your boss likes you or not,” Snell said.
(By the way, Snell didn’t have to get permission from UVM Medical Center’s public relations office before talking to me. “If they tried that, I’d laugh in their face,” Snell said.)
DHMC nurses are not unionized, but not for lack of trying. Units were started in 2008 and 2010, but both failed. In 2019, a group of DHMC nurses reached out to the Northeast Nurses Association, or NENA for short, to start another union effort. However, “it didn’t lead to an organizing drive,” Nela Hadzic, who heads NENA’s organizing, told me last week.
From what I’ve heard, the 2,500 nurses at DHMC and its clinics earn decent wages, which helps explain why unionization hasn’t caught on. Experienced nurses in some departments can earn $100,000 a year, I’m told.
However, since the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses across the country have found that money and job satisfaction don’t always go hand in hand. Many are now prioritizing workplace safety and health.
“With more than 100,000 Americans hospitalized and many among their ranks infected, nurses and other health care workers remain on a precarious front line against the coronavirus and have turned time and again to unions for help.” The New York Times wrote in 2021.
In the past year, nurses at three hospitals voted to unionize through the Massachusetts Nurses Association, the organization that worked with DHMC nurses during the 2008 and 2010 campaigns.
“Many nurses are realizing that they can’t count on the government to protect them when their lives are in danger every day,” said David Schildmeier, a spokesman for the third largest union of nurses and health professionals in the US. with 23,000 members.
Like many hospitals, DHMC is struggling to hire and retain nurses. According to its website, DHMC has about 250 openings.
On Thursday, I asked DHMC spokeswoman Audra Burns via email if supporting a union effort could help recruiting. I didn’t listen back.
The nurse behind the Instagram page has done some informal polling to gauge interest in unionizing. The responses have shown a 50/50 split.
“I’m just making art,” the nurse told the Valley News. “Somebody else can defend that issue.”
Whether a champion will emerge remains to be seen. In the meantime, DHMC nurses will remain powerless to speak freely and openly about their workplace.
Just the way their bosses like it.
Jim Kenyon can be reached at [email protected].