Five hundred Butler Memorial Hospital nurses are negotiating a new contract for the first time since Excela Health and Butler Health System merged in 2023.

Butler is our home.

We live in its neighborhoods and surrounding countryside. We work where our friends work, in the very hospital where our children were delivered and where our families seek medical care in the most vulnerable times of their lives.

In the halls of that hospital, we are both the caregivers and those who seek care. We want the hospital to thrive and the community we are so fortunate to serve to thrive as well. That’s why we are sounding the alarm.

Incidents of workplace violence have escalated in health care facilities throughout Pennsylvania and the nation, and Butler Memorial Hospital is no exception. Weapons are getting in the hospital, nurses are getting injured, and security failures are a constant. We do not feel protected by our hospital.

In the last few weeks alone, staff at Butler Memorial have experienced numerous acts of violence, harassment, and threats to safety. A case manager was punched by a patient. Emergency Department nurses were hit multiple times by different patients. A doctor’s life was threatened. And a nursing assistant got her teeth knocked out in a violent incident in the ER.

We fear for our safety.

And because we fear for our safety due to violence in our hospital, we fear for yours, too.

According to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, health care workers accounted for 73% of all nonfatal workplace injuries and illness due to violence in 2018 and were five times more likely to be punched, kicked, bitten, beaten, choked, and assaulted on the job than all other workers. Some, like those involved in the horrific mass shooting incident at UPMC Memorial in York last month, have even faced worse.

Our work environment is your care environment.

Our patients need their caregivers to feel safe and to stay on the job.

We don’t want to leave our hospital, and we certainly don’t want to leave you. But we also need and deserve to feel safe at our place of employment, and we need the hospital to put meaningful measures in place to protect us before a sentinel event, like the mass shooting at UPMC Memorial, occurs. We will not sit silently by and become sitting ducks.

We currently have one metal detector at the entrance to our Emergency Department. We have asked management to place metal detectors at the other two entrances to the hospital. They have said that it would be too expensive.

We currently have one security guard. We have asked for an additional security presence in the hospital. Management has said that it would be too expensive.

Safety is not negotiable. It’s not an option the hospital can choose to address … or not. And safety is not a bargaining chip. Nursing is a team sport. If you hurt one of us, you hurt all of us, and we stand united for each other and our patients in making Butler Memorial Hospital a safer place to work and to heal.

Tammy May, RN, Shannon Herrington, RN, Jennifer Fencil, RN, and Samantha Malinski, RN, are the nursing union leadership at Butler Memorial Hospital and comprise the executive board of Pennsylvania Independent Nurses. Pennsylvania Independent Nurses is a local of PASNAP, the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents more than 11,000 nurses and allied professionals across Pennsylvania.