St. Lawrence PC faces troubled waters

By DEBORAH A. MILES
Working conditions at the St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center in Ogdensburg have professional staff worried their clients are being treated as numbers and not as individuals.

Administrators are pushing the social workers, psychologists and nurses to see more patients. In the recent past, the average caseload was 40. Now, it’s jumped to more than 70.

“It is just not manageable,” said Robert Stickles, a PEF steward and social worker at the Ogdensburg satellite clinic.

“Professionals have ethics. This push for productivity ignores the basic guidelines for providing quality care to our patients. We fear the end result will be a bad outcome for patients, putting our licenses at stake.”

“Administrators are letting productivity concerns trump patient care,” said Virginia Davey, a teacher and PEF Division 249 council leader.

Stickles and Davey both said St. Lawrence PC administrators are more concerned with the quantity of patients seen, rather than the quality of care patients receive.

PEF leaders have raised the issue at labor-management meetings and continue to reach a stalemate. More than 225 PEF members work at the facility which includes three satellite clinics, Massena, Gouverneur and Ogdensburg. It also has inpatient units for adults and children, and a sex offenders’ treatment center.

“Part of the problem is non-professionals are demanding professionals to do more without respect for true clinical care. They want to paint us as unproductive, so they can reframe their staffing levels,” Stickles said.

“They have crossed the line with unreasonable caseloads and by having us complete paperwork during counseling sessions,” Davey added. “This flies in the face of a good therapeutic interaction with a patient.”

The case load issue is weighing heavily on members. At the Massena Mental Health Clinic, members are carrying even more on their shoulders – bullying.

“Administrators have shown no desire to identify or address this problem,” Stickles said. “They are using coercion and bullying to get staff to take on more than what is reasonable. And they continue to reframe the issue, instead of dealing with it directly.”

Stickles said the union has been working with members to provide support, empowerment and a sense of cohesion.

PEF Vice President Pat Baker said the union must continue to advocate for these members at the labor-management table.

“PEF wants to work with management to come up with a satisfactory remedy for the caseload issue,” Baker said. “The thing everyone should be focusing on is quality care for the patients. If that starts to crumble, the consequences could be grave.

“We’ve already seen how other agencies, such as the state Office of Children and Family Services, are routing clients to different facilities. It’s in an upheaval. We don’t want to see a similar situation at the state Office of Mental Health (OMH), where patients might have to travel hundreds of miles to get quality care. That could happen if they fall through the cracks here.

“And bullying shouldn’t be internalized by our members. They should share every situation with others,” Baker said.

“Employees who are being bullied can regain control by recognizing they are a target, and realizing they are not the source of the problem.”

Baker also said PEF is concerned the negative trends at St. Lawrence PC are indicative of the affect the state hiring freeze and agency cuts are having in OMH facilities.

“This is clearly having a negative impact on patient and staff safety,” she said. “The union will be speaking out about this at every opportunity.