KALAMAZOO, MI - Representatives of the Michigan Nurses Association will meet Thursday with administrators at Borgess Medical Center to determine what will happen as the hospital eliminates a department with some of its most experienced nurses.

A team of 12 skilled nurses who have specialized in flowing from crisis to crisis in order to help patients and other staff members at the 1521 Gull Road medical center, learned Monday that the department will be eliminated.

Called SWAT (for Service With a Task), they jump into situations where an incoming patient is having a heart attack or a stroke. In patient-care areas, they respond in any crisis, whether its a patient with dangerously low blood pressure or one with an irregular heart beat.

"They are critical care nurses that went into that department," said Jamie Brown, president of the Borgess Staff Nurse Council, the nurses union at the hospital. "They're talking about absorbing them into critical care staff."

Members of the union, which represents the hospital's 650 nurses, are worried that the elimination of SWAT is part of an overall reduction in the number of nurses at the medical center, and a corresponding drop in the level of patient care.

Brown described the group, which includes some nurses who have been with the unit since its inception 17 years ago, as highly-skilled people who are the hospital's first line of defense in crisis situations.

"There is a possibility of there being layoffs throughout the hospital for nurses," Brown said.

That is a patient-safety issue, she said, and "With any reduction of nurses, you won't have that experienced nurse able to respond to a crisis as you do now."

Borgess Health would not say it there will be layoffs among nurses.

In a prepared statement, the hospital said: "We continually review staffing models, within the parameters of our collective bargaining agreements to ensure efficiency of our resources, while providing the highest quality and most compassionate care. At this time, we have no information to share regarding personnel matters."

Brown said Borgess, which is part of Ascension Health, has been realigning its management and has said it wants to reduce staffing levels. There was no word about the elimination of the SWAT department until a meeting on Monday, Jan. 29, of its members and administrators.

The sides agreed to meet again on Thursday, Feb. 1, for more discussion. The union hopes to negotiate.

"I hope management will bargain in good faith around the reduction that they have proposed," Brown said.