Nurses at the Tampa veterans’ hospital say they are being stretched too thin. They rallied outside the hospital on Tuesday to protest what they call a national “hiring freeze” at the VA, part of a series of events held around the U.S. this month.
About 160 nurses and other hospital employees showed up over the course of the morning to chant things like, “What do we want? Safe staffing! When do we want it? Now!” on the street outside the facility as passing cars honked in support.
Tuesday’s event comes a year after the James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital opened a new bed tower, adding 96 medical-surgical single patient rooms and 40 intensive care unit beds to its main campus.
Nurse Courtenay Summers works in the tower and said staffing hasn’t kept pace with the expansion.
Nurses sometimes have to miss breaks, she said, and there’s often not enough support staff to help with tasks like transporting patients and lab samples. It fuels burnout, but Summers adds it also means patients don’t always get the attention they deserve.
“I come from a family of veterans, my dad and my brother actually receive care here, and so it's very near and dear to my heart that we improve the quality of care and the only way to do that is to increase the numbers of our staff,” she said.
The rally was one of six that National Nurses United held this month at VA hospitals in cities including Miami, Brooklyn, Cincinnati, Buffalo and Durham, N.C.
Justin Wooden helped organize the one in Tampa. He cares for some of the hospital’s sickest patients as a nurse on an intensive care unit.
Nurses on Wooden’s unit are often pulled away to help in other short-staffed areas, he said, leaving those behind with no support. The hospital also removed aides from the unit earlier this year, Wooden said, adding to the strain.
“Think of your family, you know if they're in a hospital bed and they need something, they hit their call bell for a nurse or someone to help, we have less staff to respond in a quick, shorter time,” he said.
The VA says it's hiring
The Department of Veterans Affairs says there is not a national hiring freeze, rather the agency is “strategically” hiring nurses “where needed,” press secretary Terrence Hayes said in a statement.
Over the last three years, Hayes said the VA has “aggressively hired nurses nationwide,” adding 14,000 to the workforce to a total of 122,000 nurses, the most in the agency’s history. The increased hiring was in preparation for a record influx of veterans entering the VA health care system following the passage of the PACT Act, which extended benefits to vets exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances.
In Tampa, Hayes said growth has remained “consistent.”
“We are on pace to grow at 1% this year,” he said. “In addition, we currently have more than 110 nurses in some stage of the hiring process. We just completed our annual staffing methodology and project additional growth in each of our clinical areas as a result.”
Report identifies "severe" nursing shortages
Staffing shortages have been a problem at the VA for years, as they have been in the private health care sector. That includes other positions too, such as pharmacists. The issues persist despite the recent hiring expansion, according to a report the VA Office of Inspector General published this month.
Though the number of severe occupational staffing shortages facilities reported in fiscal year 2024 was down 5% from the previous year, 82% of facilities still reported severe shortages for nurses, including the Tampa VA.
VA officials announced earlier this year that budget cuts following the previous years’ expansion would require the agency to eliminate 10,000 jobs, which they said would happen largely as a result of attrition, or not filling certain positions when employees quit.
But Dennis McLain, nursing director for the Tampa union and long-time VA employee, said hospitals need more frontline workers to take care of patients safely.
“Everybody knows if you don’t have enough nurses that you can’t take care of people the way you should be,” he said.
McLain called on the Tampa VA to do more to retain nurses. He wants the hospital to offer alternative work schedules to incentivize nurses that other VA facilities have had success with recently.
In his statement, VA press secretary Terrence Hayes touted a 3.4% nurse turnover rate at the VA, which he said is far lower than the private sector. Hayes also highlighted statistics that show wait times at the VA have lowered and patient satisfaction has improved.
“We continue to support our staff and union partners as they are critical members in the delivery of care to Veterans in our community,” he said. “We greatly value our collaborative working relationship with our union partners and remain aligned in our goal to strengthen our nursing workforce. VA deeply appreciates our partnership with National Nurses United and will continue to work with them directly to resolve their concerns.”
