Labor pains: Delivery rooms closed at a Gallup hospital as employees resign
A year ago, 18 nurses and four doctors staffed the labor and delivery unit at one of Gallup’s two hospitals. Today, all the nurses are gone, and the last doctor announced her resignation two weeks ago.
The unit closed last week, forcing many soon-to-be parents to find a faraway delivery room and making it harder for women to access health care in Gallup, N.M., and the surrounding area. When it was open, the nurses and four obstetrician-gynecologists delivered between 30 and 40 babies a month, many of them to mothers who come from rural areas like Navajo Nation and Zuni Pueblo.
The unit’s closure might seem like just another casualty of the statewide nursing shortage, one that’s hitting many rural hospitals just like Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services in Gallup. While former nurses and physicians in Gallup say there are some similarities driving shortages here, they stress there are also some important differences.
The biggest is what they say is a culture of fear and intimidation at the hospital, one that’s intensified in recent weeks as a group of doctors organized to form a labor union and following the firing of a respected Navajo doctor. They accuse an out-of-state company of extracting profits from the hospital, which has harmed patients and driven away longtime staff who had no intention of leaving.
Read more: https://sourcenm.com/2021/10/04/labor-pains/
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