ORANGEBURG — While approaches in mental health care have improved in many ways over the years, taking a look back can sometimes determine how best to move forward.
That’s what CSEA Rockland Psychiatric Center Local leaders would like to see.
With workplace violence concerns at the forefront of their priorities to continually address, local officers are drawing on their decades on the job – since as far back as the early 1980s – to formulate ways to keep workers safe.
An important first step, they said, is making the training process for new employees longer and more comprehensive.
Rockland Psychiatric Center Local Executive Vice President Tyjuana Parker and activist Jean Carmelus, a member of the local’s executive board, on the center’s main campus in Orangeburg.
“When I came in, we got very intensive training, where we learned about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other conditions,” said Rockland Psychiatric Center Local Executive Vice President Tyjuana Parker.
In recent years, the population of individuals receiving services through OMH has changed. Many of the individuals are now more aggressive and prone to violence than those in the past, which has made the care they receive more complicated. As such, the training of staff also needs to evolve to continue to meet the needs of the evolving individual population.
The Statewide OMH Labor-Management Committee, chaired by Buffalo Psychiatric Center Local President Lovette Mootry, has been advocating for increased training.
It is vital to ensure workers get increased training because sending a worker with inadequate training onto a unit can potentially put them and their co-workers at risk if they haven’t yet learned how to interact with patients and de-escalate behaviors.
It’s Parker’s feeling that adequate training is also important to ensure worker retention.
“You’ve got to retain the people you get in the door,” Parker said. “If they’re leaving, how are you going to have the manpower to take care of those you serve? When I came in as a trainee, you had to get through a traineeship, and they gave me the tools to be efficient.”
Keeping those staffing levels up is vital for when incidents do occur. CSEA activist Jean Carmelus, a mental health therapy aide and member of the local’s executive board, spent nearly a month hospitalized when he was injured on the job several years ago. He faced surgeries and a long recovery after an incident during which he broke a leg.
While he has returned to work after an extended period, Carmelus still finds it difficult to speak about the experience.
“They were dealing with a crisis and the patient, who had a black belt in karate, clipped his legs from out under him,” said Parker. “He still came back with a heart of gold, ready to work.”
That dedication, despite the challenges of the job, is something for which the local officers feel the CSEA membership at their facility deserves appreciation and respect.
CSEA members working as therapy aides develop a rapport with patients that allows them to gauge patients’ moods and progress made in treatment, valuable feedback that isn’t routinely incorporated into decision making that happens on a higher level.
Parker represents our union at new employee orientations and said she strives to impart wisdom from her decades of experience to workers coming on board. When workers learn to approach patients with compassion and an understanding of their history, it can lead to a higher level of quality care and prevent incidents.
“Treat them as human beings and they’re going to give it to you in return,” said Parker. “You don’t know if the way you’re speaking is the way their parents or someone else spoke to them, and it can retrigger their trauma. Knowing their history and what triggers to avoid is important.”
Working more collaboratively, so workers from different departments and shifts are informed about patient history, can ultimately lead to better and safer outcomes, Parker said.
— Jessica Ladlee
Taylor
In light of continued workplace violence, remembering Clara Taylor’s legacy more important than ever
ORANGEBURG — Brenda Gamble and Tyjuana Parker remember where they were when they heard about Clara Taylor’s murder.
Gamble, president of the Rockland Psychiatric Center (RPC) Local, and Parker, the local’s executive vice president, were early on in their careers in July 1987 when they received the horrifying news that their co-worker Taylor was beaten to death by a patient while working alone overnight in a transitional ward on the RPC campus.
Taylor wasn’t supposed to be alone with patients that night. Short staffing left the facility understaffed that night and cost the mother of nine her life. The patient arrested for her murder was ruled incompetent to stand trial and remanded to a forensic psychiatric center.
Our union rallied in Taylor’s memory, demanding better staffing and safer working conditions for OMH staff. That advocacy has continued over the years.
The Aug. 10, 1987, edition of The Public Sector, CSEA’s then official publication, detailed the murder of Clara Taylor.
For workers who’ve been at RPC since the 1980s, the memory of Taylor’s murder remains fresh in their minds. Those who’ve come aboard since have learned her story.
With workplace violence still a problem today, Gamble and Parker said it’s important that Taylor be remembered as our union works to address the health and safety issues of today. Today’s problems that aren’t much different from those in the summer of 1987.
A large photo of Taylor is displayed in their local office. It used to hang in a building on the campus that was named in memory of Taylor, but that building was shuttered when the footprint in Orangeburg was scaled back.
Gamble and Parker are on a mission to see the photo back on display in a more public area of RPC since the previous tribute no longer stands. There’s no time limit, they said, on mourning for the dead and fighting for the living.
— Jessica Ladlee
