Registered nurses connected with UPMC Altoona, along with the relative of a patient, argued in a virtual “town hall” Monday that the hospital is in crisis, with patients lacking proper care and staffers overwhelmed, due to a shortage of nurses.

Representatives of UPMC Altoona were not a part of the SEIU Healthcare PA event.

Patient-to-nurse ratios in the emergency department, for example, which would normally be 4-1, have swelled to 8-1, making it impossible to administer proper care according to the nurses.

The nurses’ descriptions — which align with calls recently made to the Mirror by readers who’ve experienced the local emergency department — should inspire state lawmakers to pass proposed legislation that would set minimum staffing ratios based on patient needs and nursing skill levels, the nurses argued.

“We know we have patients who have experienced long wait times recently,” stated UPMC Altoona President Jan Fisher in an email from a spokesperson, in response to questions from the Mirror about the issues prior to the town hall meeting. “We understand this can be extremely frustrating and we apologize.”

Hospital staff has been “working tirelessly, day in and day out to ensure high quality care,” Fisher continued. “They are our heroes, and we can’t thank them enough for going above and beyond.”

“These are unprecedented times,” Fisher added.

Too many nurses have been leaving the hospital, fed up and guilt-ridden because they can’t give proper care, the nurses said during the town hall.

If one nurse has eight patients — “the new normal” — she can only spend an average of about seven minutes per hour with each, said ER nurse Kaitlyn Fluke.

Not long ago, an elderly and confused patient who was one of eight being attended to by an experienced nurse, yanked off his heart monitor connection and breathing mask and went to a chair in his room, where the horrified nurse, who had been in a room with another needy patient, found him, Fluke said.

He was gray and had no pulse, Fluke said.

A team of several people spent 30 minutes trying unsuccessfully to revive him, Fluke said.

That man needed someone to watch him constantly, to ensure his breathing mask stayed on, Fluke said.

The nurse had plenty of experience, Fluke said.

“You can’t say she didn’t prioritize patients or that there was a lack of awareness,” Fluke said. “She just didn’t have the resources (she) needed.”

Afterward, nurses asked one another, “What part of this is OK?” Fluke said. “What bad thing has to happen before people are going to stand up (and effect a change)?”

A patient with developmental disabilities, who clearly needs one-on-one care, doesn’t meet UPMC criteria for that level of attention, complained that patient’s sister-in-law, Sharon Pope, during the town hall.

Without more attention than she was getting at UPMC Altoona, the patient was at risk for bed sores and of lying in her own urine and feces, Pope said.

How would the CEO of UPMC feel if his mother or brother or sister-in-law were in that situation? Pope asked rhetorically.

Pope is angry and frustrated, but not with the nursing staff, who are simply worked beyond their abilities, she said.

She has seen those nurses “come completely unglued,”she said.

Because it is allowing such conditions to exist, the organization has “failed” the community, Pope said.

Erin Burchfield left the UPMC Altoona ER to go to Allegheny County, because she feels like she’s “against the wall,” she said.

An excellent young nurse from Hershey, whom Burchfield helped orient to work at UPMC Altoona left to become a bartender — a job in which she could make more money, Burchfield said.

Such losses are “the penalty UPMC has to pay for putting us in this situation,” Burchfield said.

“There are no words I can offer you to describe the anguish that … I feel for what you’re going through,” said state Rep. Jim Gregory, R-Hollidaysburg, who recounted hearing from a friend who was in the hospital for COVID-19 and waited in a hall on a gurney for 24 hours without water or use of a bathroom. “You are being put in such horrible positions.”

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.