Four current and former nurses at St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet have filed a class-action lawsuit, alleging severe understaffing endangered patients and harmed nurses.
The lawsuit, filed in Will County Circuit Court against the hospital’s owners Prime Healthcare Services and Ascension Healthcare, alleges the hospital failed to meet minimum safe nurse-to-patient ratios in violation of two Illinois laws: the Nurse Staffing by Patient Acuity Act and the Hospital Report Card Act.
“By endangering the lives of patients through severe understaffing and forcing Plaintiffs and other nurses to watch helplessly as the needs of their patients are ignored, the Defendants have engaged in conduct that is unethical, immoral and indifferent to the conduct expected of a hospital, to provide safe and adequate patient care,” the lawsuit stated, in part. “Worse, to add insult to this deliberate injury of the Plaintiff nurses, this is conduct over which—as Defendants have gone to lengths to stress—the Plaintiffs and other nurses have no control.”…