The vice president of the nurses’ union at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center was fired last week and the president disciplined amid labor unrest over staffing at the region’s only academic hospital.

The nurses’ union says UCMC is trying to silence the union and bully its members by sacking Jennifer Donaldson, a labor and delivery nurse at UCMC for nearly 30 years, after she communicated with the union membership via Facebook Live April 18.

UC Health says Donaldson was fired for leaving her duties caring for mothers in delivery to make the nearly six-minute social-media video and was “not truthful” about the situation.

The union’s president, Michelle Thoman, who has worked five years at UCMC, was given a written warning over the video that another offense would mean the end of her employment. The union said neither nurse had prior disciplinary action on their records.

Nurse staffing has been a longstanding struggle for hospitals, and nurses’ unions are getting more vocal and taking labor action over the problem. Last year, staffing was a key issue in collective bargaining between UC Health, the nonprofit that operates UCMC, and the Registered Nurses Association, which represents UCMC nurses.

Tuesday, the nurses' union at Mercy Health St. Vincent Medical Center in Toledo rejected with a 57% majority a proposed contract that included pay raises but did not satisfy demands on staffing. The union went on strike May 6 after a year of negotiations did not produce a contract. The union and the hospital now must return to the table.

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The Registered Nurses Association is the UCMC unit of the Ohio Nurses Association. In the April 18 video, Donaldson said the union and UC Health had reached agreement over retention bonuses for operating-room nurses and criteria for extra-shift bonuses.

ONA spokeswoman Molly Homan said Thoman and Donaldson were disciplined after recording the video for Facebook Live updating the membership on negotiations over “ongoing nurse staffing shortages at the medical center.”

“The medical center’s actions to stop our momentum is particularly alarming because our advocacy is focused on positive changes to the hospital – the type of changes the Tristate area deserves,” Homan’s statement said. “Patients of UCMC deserve the confidence that they are receiving the best care possible.”

UC Health spokeswoman Amanda Nageleisen denied that the health system was trying to silence the nurses. The union “has chosen to issue false statements regarding the termination of a nurse," she said in a written statement.

“After a lengthy investigation, we found that the nurse in question, working in labor and delivery at UC Medical Center, chose to leave her patients to go to a break room to film a live social-media video. This nurse did not perform the appropriate handoff of care and abandoned her responsibility to monitor the fetal heart rates of the patients in her care.”

Nageleisen added, “It was also determined that the nurse was not truthful about her failure to monitor these vulnerable patients.”

Nageleisen declined to go into specifics about Donaldson’s actions, the investigation or UC Health’s discipline.

In response to the hospital's statement, the union said no patients were endangered. Donaldson was on an allowed break when she made the video, and other nurses monitored patients. Thoman was off work that day.

The discipline was “a clear-cut case of hospital retaliation against nurses who are prominent and active in the union,” said acting RNA Vice President Tina Arrona. “This outrageous harassment and bullying won’t intimidate us.”

The union has filed grievances against the hospital over the disciplinary measures and has demanded that UCMC reinstate Donaldson and remove Thoman’s disciplinary letter.

"We will continue to be a voice for our patients and shed light on important issues that the medical center would prefer to ignore,” Homan said.