WILMINGTON
— Right before Thanksgiving,
ChristianaCare medical residents and physicians filed with federal labor officials to unionize, aiming to become the first resident doctors to do so in the First State.
Roughly 300 residents with ChristianaCare in the Newark and Wilmington hospitals filed with the
Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR) to unionize in a bid to improve working conditions, which would benefit the patient experience overall.
“The general sentiment is that while we do appreciate the benefits of ChristianaCare, we also want to ensure that the benefits that we really care about are safe, and that going forward, we have the opportunity to ask for things to make the job easier,” said Dr. Layla Annous, who is one of the residents involved in the union effort. “Just because something is better than its neighbor does not mean there’s no room for improvement.”
The organization effort came days after medical residents in the Philadelphia region, including Jefferson Health, Einstein Healthcare Network, Temple Health and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
launched their own campaign on Nov. 22. Those efforts represented 3,000 residents, according to the CIR.
In October, residents at Penn Medicine ratified a union contract, which became the first contract for a residency program in Pennsylvania.
While ChristianaCare is Delaware’s largest employer outside the state government with 12,500 employees, it has also been pushing to expand its presence in southern Pennsylvania in the last three years with freestanding facilities and acquisitions.
This summer, close to 300 doctors at ChristianaCare voted to unionize with the Doctors Council Service Employees International Union. It is the first health care union in the First State.
Unlike established physicians, residents are just starting their training in the medical field. After residents graduate medical school, they work in a hospital or clinic for on-the-job training in a medical specialty for three to five years. In general, physicians cannot practice medicine without completing the residency.
Residents also perform the duties of attending physicians, including diagnosing, managing, and treating medical issues, while remaining under the supervision and license of fully licensed doctors. Residents are officially restricted to working a maximum of 80 hours per week over the course of a month, but the reality is many work over those hours.
CIR representatives note in a press release that chronic understaffing is a consistent issue in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and one that hospital leadership across the region had not addressed.
The work varies by medicine specialty, but Annous, who is in ChristianaCare’s internal and pediatric residency program, said that most of the more strenuous tasks is patient intake and taking care of hospitalized patients for a 12-hour shift starting as early as 6 a.m. Those days can look different for surgical or radiological residents.
“The hope is once we get everyone at the table, we can make sure we really address things across all departments. I’ve heard that a lot of people are interested in gaining the ability to negotiate a better contract for staffing both in the hospital and in primary care and clinic settings,” she said.
The CIR anticipates a vote could be held in December or early January.
