AMHI unions file grievances with state Unsafe conditions caused more than 80 workers to be injured, staff say

AUGUSTA – The unions representing workers at the Augusta Mental Health Institute have filed grievances alleging the state’s psychiatric hospital has unsafe working conditions, saying more than 80 workers have been injured in the past few months.

Laura Fisher, president of the AMHI chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said members of her union and the Maine State Employees Association are becoming upset with the growing number of injuries. She said 25 hospital employees were injured in the past month alone.

Fisher said the hospital has become unsafe for AMHI staff because of new treatment philosophies and practices that have been implemented without proper training, new procedures or adequate leadership.

“We have important leadership difficulties here in this hospital. I’m talking about the administration running this hospital,” she said.

AMHI is run by a court-appointed receiver who oversees operations at the direction of a judge.

Jamie Morrill, AMHI’s acting superintendent, said he is ready to make changes in response to the unions’ class-action grievances. He agreed hospital staff members need more training, and said officials need to intervene in escalating situations sooner to avoid or minimize violence.

“One staff injury is too many,” he said.

Morrill said the rising injury rate stems from criminal patients in the hospital’s forensic treatment unit.

“We transferred a couple of combative clients back to the Department of Corrections,” he said. “But the fact remains, we’re being asked by the corrections system to handle more violent clients, and part of our commitment to our staff is to make that safer.”

Fisher said staff injury problems are not limited to the hospital’s forensic unit.

Union leaders have submitted a list of 14 problems and suggested changes they say are needed to make AMHI safer and have begun meeting with hospital officials to discuss their concerns, Morrill said.

He said AMHI has recently increased the amount of secure space available for criminal patients, and more space can be opened up for forensic programs in the new Riverview Psychiatric Center, which is scheduled to open June 12.

“We’ve come up with a plan we think will work,” Morrill said. “We’re going to try to create a kind of specialty mental health worker with a forensic specialty or a nurse with a forensic specialty and provide specific training for the forensic unit.”

He also hopes to provide more programming for forensic patients, who often cannot leave their unit as other patients do.