630 frontline nurses at St. Mary Medical Center in Bucks County are negotiating a new contract grounded in what should be their shared priorities with hospital management: safe staffing levels that ensure high-quality patient care, and the recruitment, retention, and respect necessary to support the work they do – a healing mission for the St. Mary patient community. But while the nurses are fighting for patient-centric care for Bucks County, their out-of-state employer – Michigan-based Trinity Health – is fighting them.
“We come to work every day to provide the best care for our patients,” says Debbi Bozeman, RN, a nurse in the surgical, orthopedic and trauma unit at St. Mary. “You can’t do that with a 6-patient assignment on med surg, and you certainly can’t do that with a 3- patient assignment in the ICU, yet that’s what management expects us to do. Our census is up, and our staffing is down, and that math doesn’t work.”
“It’s easy for the people who sit at the desk to say, we have to save money,” she adds. “But we’re at the bedside, where we have to save lives. I ask you, which is more important?”
In the fall 2025 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Report, St. Mary Medical Center earned a score of 40 out of 100 for Nursing and Bedside Care for Patients, a measure of nurse staffing adequacy. St. Mary’s score of 40 is a “worse than average” rating on this particular issue; the average hospital score on this measure is 79.09, nearly twice St. Mary’s score.
Trinity is more committed to corporate profits than to its patients, the community, or its employees. The nurses deserve better – their Bucks County patient community deserves better. That’s what this picket is about, said PASNAP spokesperson Megan Othersen Gorman
Nurse are planning to picket at hospital Wednesday Feb 18 from 7 am to 9 am; 11 am to 1 pm and say elected officials will be on hand to support picketing nurses.
