Nurses at Armstrong County Memorial Hospital plan to strike early Sunday

Nurses at ACMH Hospital in the Kittanning area are set to strike Sunday after months of contract talks with no results, union officials announced .

Cassie Wood, a registered nurse and president of ACMH Nurses United, said the strike is set to take place daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday through Thursday.

Wood said the nurses plan to return to normal work hours even if no deal is reached.

Rallies are planned in front of the hospital, which is off Route 28 and Route 422 in East Franklin, at noon Sunday and at noon Tuesday through Thursday.

Calls to hospital officials were not immediately returned.

The 220 nurses at ACMH have been in contract negotiations with the hospital since July.

“Nurses are fleeing the bedside not because we don’t like being caregivers. We love our patients and our role as their advocates,” Wood said. “What we don’t like is feeling that the skill, experience and commitment we bring to the job every day are grossly undervalued. That means that patient care is undervalued.”

The union says more than 40 nurses have left ACMH in the past year.

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses & Allied Professionals said nurses are leaving because they are burned out from short staffing, underappreciated and undervalued.

They said nurses are going to other hospitals in the region, where they are making $6 more per hour.

Union officials said the nurses on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected hospital management’s latest offer, a slight change from its last position.

Nurses United is an affiliate of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents more than 9,000 nurses and health care professionals across the state.