Panic buttons on nurses a divide in Fairview contract talks

Fairview Health Services nurses are balking in union contract negotiations at plans to outfit them with panic buttons that can protect them from workplace violence at Twin Cities hospitals but also track their workday movements.

Negotiators with the Minnesota Nurses Association had requested panic buttons but asked Fairview to not use data from the devices for almost anything other than emergency response.

But Fairview has not wanted to prohibit other possible uses of the GPS-enabled technology, making it one of several issues standing in the way of a new contract for its nurses at the University of Minnesota Medical Center and four other hospitals.

“They want to ... reserve the right to use them to track and discipline us,” said nurse Rachel Anderson during an MNA protest outside M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina on June 4. “Because nothing says safety like surveillance threats.”

Both sides agreed three years ago to test the safety benefits of panic buttons, also called duress buttons, which nurses can clip to their scrubs and activate in emergencies to send silent alerts for security help.

The need was punctuated in April when a visitor brandished a gun during a domestic dispute at M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina — even though the hospital has a metal detector at its ER entrance.

Fairview in a written statement said that it has proposed contract language, affirming that it does not plan to discipline any nurses based solely on location data from the devices.

However, the health system foresees additional uses of the GPS-enabled tracking technology, such as identifying a worker who is diverting prescription drugs from dispensers for personal or illicit use.

“This is consistent with how we currently use information like security footage, door access logs, badge swipes, or charting records,” the health system stated. “We believe that is a reasonable and responsible approach that protects both patients and staff.”

The union hasn’t been satisfied with Fairview’s goodwill intent.

Negotiators want a guarantee that hospitals won’t use the tracker data to evaluate nurses — with one exception. If hospitals already have other evidence that nurses are diverting drugs, then the union would support checking data from panic buttons for further proof.

Concerns about expanded use of panic buttons beyond security have emerged elsewhere, at least with the wireless versions that include wearable alarms or apps on mobile phones. A new workplace safety law in New York requires employers of 500 or more retail workers to provide them with panic alarms, but not to use them to track employee locations unless the alarms are activated.

The panic alarm issue is specific to Fairview contract talks, but is one example of the divide that has delayed more than 15,000 hospital nurses from reaching new three-year contracts. Negotiations are ongoing with the Allina, Children’s, Fairview and North Memorial hospital systems in the Twin Cities, and the Essentia and Aspirus St. Luke’s systems in the Duluth area.

Finger-pointing emerged publicly in recent weeks as the hospitals and nurses blame one another for the lack of agreements over pay, benefits and nurse-to-patient staffing levels. Essentia issued a federal complaint, accusing the union of obstructing negotiations by refusing to meet on 46 proposed dates since March.

Following its one-day picket earlier this month, MNA announced that nurses will vote June 23 on whether to authorize a strike if negotiations remain fruitless. Nurses engaged in a simultaneous, three-day strike at Twin Cities and Duluth area hospitals in fall 2022 at a cost approaching $100 million for the hospitals, mostly in the form of high-cost replacement workers.

Nurses have encountered increasingly volatile conditions in hospitals, where patients weaning off medications or suffering delirium can become violent with little warning. Distraught relatives can be combative as well.

Federal labor data underscores the problem: 630 Minnesota hospital workers missed work because they suffered disabling injuries from on-the-job violence in 2021 and 2022. That tripled the total a decade earlier, federal data shows.

Safety concerns are part of the negotiations between nurses and hospitals right now and have motivated other changes in recent years, such as metal detectors and increased security patrols on high-risk units. Allina Health has tried a new locally made alternative to pepper spray to subdue agitated patients or visitors without injuring them.

M Health Fairview St. John’s Hospital in Maplewood suffered one of the most high-profile cases in 2014, although it was under the HealthEast care system at the time. A delirious patient charged out of his room, swinging a metal rod and injuring four hospital workers before he died after being subdued outside the hospital by police officers.

Fairview and its nurses had agreed in 2022 to test the use of panic buttons in emergency departments and other hospital units selected by the union. Nurses and hospital safety officials were supposed to meet three months after the buttons were tested to evaluate whether they worked. That initial effort didn’t result in a dramatic expansion in panic buttons across the system, though, leaving it as an issue for the union to revisit this year.

Fairview and union negotiators resumed talks on Wednesday.