Workers at western Kansas mental hospital decry short staffing

When Kyle Nuckolls gets off work at Larned State Hospital between 3 or 4 a.m., the exhaustion of repeated overtime shifts catches up with him, he says.

“I cannot count the number of times I’ve fallen asleep at the wheel driving home or the number of employees who have told me they’ve done the same,” Nuckolls said.

Two Larned employees, Nuckolls and Lynette Lewis, told a legislative oversight hearing in detail Monday how the understaffed mental hospital in western Kansas increasingly relies on employees repeatedly working long overtime shifts.

“I have never seen it this bad as it is now, ever,” said Lewis, an 18-year employee of the hospital.

Nearly 240 positions at the hospital, or 26 percent, were vacant as of last week, according to the state Department for Aging and Disability Services.

Although the state has temporarily shifted patients around, the employees told legislators they need a permanent solution to make sure both patients and employees stay safe at the hospital.

And the top administrator at the Department for Aging and Disability Services acknowledged that many of the employees’ complaints about Larned State Hospital are valid.

Repeated overtime shifts

Most Larned employees trace the staffing problems to a voluntary retirement incentive program that launched in 2010, said Rebecca Proctor, executive director of the Kansas Organization of State Employees.

“A lot of people retired earlier, probably more than should have been allowed,” Proctor said.

The staffing problems have snowballed since then, she said.

“As more people leave because of the (long) hours, it creates more overtime,” Proctor said.

Now, it’s not uncommon to see employees repeatedly working shifts of 12 hours and 16 hours, Nuckolls said, adding that the quality of work and the workplace atmosphere suffer.

“They’re afraid of losing jobs over small mistakes, mistakes that happen after 20 or 30 hours of overtime in four days,” said Nuckolls, who is a union steward at the hospital. “When I’m on my fourth or fifth 12-hour shift in a row, I know I’m going to make mistakes. I’m going to make mistakes because I’m human.”

Nuckolls said one female employee was told she couldn’t leave to pick up her child from day care because she had to work an overtime shift no one else could fill.

“The fact we have families and lives outside of work isn’t even acknowledged,” Nuckolls said.

Lewis cited employees getting reprimanded for calling in sick.

“They don’t respect our people,” Lewis said. “We are just a number.”

Department response

Tim Keck, the interim secretary for the Kansas Department on Aging and Disability Services, said he largely agreed about problems in the hospital’s management when he took the job in January.

“What caught my ear the first week on the job was the fact that they couldn’t go to their kids’ tae kwondo practices or basketball games … because they’re working too many hours and too often,” Keck said about Larned employees. “I agreed with them, at that point anyway, that leadership seemed to not care as much about the employees as I would expect.”

The hospital’s staffing problems prompted the state to start transferring prison inmates who were being treated at the state hospital back to the corrections facility there so the hospital can shut down two units and free up those employees to work elsewhere.

The state is also trying to fix staffing problems at its other mental hospital, Osawatomie, by raising pay for registered nurses. Despite challenges at Osawatomie, Keck said, employee morale is strong.

‘Treated poorly’

Keck said the leadership at Larned needs to treat staff members better to improve the culture there. The KDADS announced last week that Chris Mattingly, a consultant who specializes in temporary hospital management assignments, would be the interim director at Larned.

“At Larned … they felt beaten down and treated poorly,” Keck said. “That’s not the kind of environment that I expect.”

Keck said the agency is looking at shortening employee orientation, more fair overtime policies, giving employees a choice where they work overtime shifts and a more “family-friendly” day care policy to boost employee morale.

There are inherent struggles in recruiting people to work at a mental hospital in rural western Kansas, Keck said.

“It gets more and more difficult as the unemployment rate drops,” he said. “I can’t say that I blame them. It’s long work. It’s hard work.”

Keck also said the agency wants to increase recruiting outside of Larned’s immediate area.

‘Shifting that pressure elsewhere’

Proctor said the transfer of inmates at Larned is simply pushing the burden from one group of state employees to another.

“We don’t believe these inmate shifts are the proper solution for either the inmates or the employees involved,” Proctor said. “You’re just shifting that pressure elsewhere. There’s going to be increased pressure on the folks that are in our correctional facilities.”

Employees said they are also concerned about more intensive kinds of care for high-risk patients.

“They worry officers working with their patients will not have proper training to de-escalate and manage psychiatric patients,” Nuckolls said.

This story was originally published April 18, 2016 at 1:18 PM with the headline "Workers at western Kansas mental hospital decry short staffing."