BANGOR – A new three-year contract covering about 870 registered nurses at Eastern Maine Medical Center received the endorsement of the hospital’s board of trustees Monday afternoon. The board’s approval follows ratification by the nurses over the weekend and brings to a close a traumatic negotiating period that brought the 400-bed hospital to the brink of an unprecedented one-day strike, largely over the issue of staffing.

The contract was approved by all 19 board members present at a hastily convened meeting with one member absent. The new contract took effect immediately.

The two sides had been stalemated for two weeks, primarily over the nurses’ demand for a “professional practice committee” made up of all staff nurses with binding input into staffing decisions and other matters. Negotiators for the Maine State Nurses Association maintained such a committee was essential to nurses’ ability to have control over their profession. The hospital rejected it as running counter to the institution’s “culture of inclusion” by bypassing nurse managers charged with the smooth operation of their patient care units.

Included in the contract that has now been approved and accepted by both sides is language that establishes a professional practice committee comprising eight staff nurses appointed by the nurses’ union and eight nurse managers appointed by the hospital. The committee will be co-chaired by a staff nurse and a nurse manager. The entire committee will meet monthly to discuss staffing levels and other matters that affect patient care.

Staff nurses are authorized to meet separately, with pay, in advance of each meeting to discuss their concerns before presenting them to the larger group. The committee will make written recommendations to the hospital’s chief nursing officer, who must respond within 30 days. Decisions of the CNO are final and not subject to appeal.

Speaking at a press conference at the hospital’s Riverside Inn on Monday, Vice President and CNO Lorraine Rodgerson said the new committee “will help provide the best care we can.” The process of naming nurse managers to the committee will begin immediately, she said, so the first meeting can take place as soon as possible.

Greg Howat, vice president for human resources and education at the hospital, said the “inclusive” makeup of the committee is “a recipe for good recommendations regarding staffing.”

Reached for comment after the hospital’s press conference, staff nurse and bargaining unit president Judy Brown said the committee structure is “a building block” for nurse input into staffing.

“In negotiations, you always want more,” Brown said. “This is a compromise; we’ll work with what we’ve got.”

Other elements of the new contract include:

. A pay increase of 4 percent in the first year, 3 percent in the second year and 3 percent in the third year.

. Provisions to keep charge nurses eligible for union membership.

. An agreement that nurses will continue to pay no portion of their own health insurance premium. Nurses paying to cover family members will experience a 10 percent increase effective Jan. 1, 2008.

The contract also addresses the use of technology in patient care, paid time off, payroll deductions and other issues.

Both sides expressed relief on Monday that agreement had been reached and the threatened strike averted.

Rodgerson said she was “pleased that this long process … is behind us.” The difficult negotiating period has strained relationships between hospital administrators and nurses, as well as between nurses divided over the issue of the strike.

Howat said the three-year period before the next contract will give both sides an opportunity to review the negotiation process, made more contentious this year, he added, by the MSNA’s recent affiliation with the California Nurses Association and that group’s National Nurses Organizing Committee.

The relationship between the hospital and the nurses is like a marriage, Howat said, with the partners having to live side by side and offer “constructive criticism.”

“For the sake of our nurses, our community and our patients, we need to do a better job about working collaboratively to improve care, and spend less time pressuring each other,” Howat said.

Brown said MSNA’s affiliation last year with the California organizations only formalized a longstanding connection between them, one built largely on their shared political support for universal health care.

For the hospital to characterize this year’s thorny negotiations as representing the interests of an out-of-state group is “misleading,” she said.

Brown also expressed a desire for a better relationship between nurses and the hospital.

“I hope that with this new contract we’ve ushered in an era of improved communications,” she said.