I work for Kaiser. In my opinion, the people who went on strike were the ones who were brave enough to do so. The ones who were willing to risk their livelihood because they care about patients.
The people I know who went on strike did so out of principle. They did it because they see the suffering that walks through the door. They see their patients, but they know how powerless they are to help, because there is simply too much need and not enough staffing to meet that need. It is heartbreaking to see people suffer and know that they will not be able to get the help that they need. It is painful. And this is why the strike happens.
Sure, patients can advocate for themselves. Sometimes. And they can switch providers. Sometimes. And sometimes it is too little and too late. For example, right now, Kaiser has 4 lawsuits against it because of suicide due to denied and delayed access. Patient advocacy only goes so far. Kaiser claims these lawsuits have no merit. And Kaiser has a big legal team. And Kaiser will probably win the cases. But every person who works in the mental health field at Kaiser knows that access and ongoing treatment at Kaiser is woefully inadequate.
Every single week, behavioral health patients at Kaiser lose hope because they cannot get timely appointments at Kaiser. It is injustice of the highest order.
It would be, in my opinion, be more of a violation of the ethics code for Kaiser psychologists to stand idly by, while watching even more patients deteriorate and decline, than to continue work-as-usual in a system that acts with reckless disregard for patient well-being.
The notion of firing the striking clinicians and replacing them with Kaiser drones who might willingly allow Kaiser to continue to perpetrate gross injustice on people who we, as mental health clinicians, are supposed to defend -- this, to me, borders on complicity.
Regarding what happened to the patients who needed care that week: Some Kaiser clinicians that I know who went on strike -- with forgone pay -- made themselves available to the clinic for emergencies. Others who work in crisis circumstances still worked -- because they knew their patients needed them -- even though they wholeheartedly supported the rationale behind the strike -- a need for greater staffing. Many psychiatrists (who are shareholders in Kaiser and therefore not part of the union) picked up the slack, temporarily. Non-urgent patients had their psychotherapy appointments rescheduled, and yes, this is unfortunate. But what is more unfortunate is the way in which Kaiser continues to short-staff its psychology departments, rendering the long-term outlook for so many of the patients who come through the doors seeking and needing help incredibly bleak, week after week after week.
As mental health providers, this fight is, in many ways, a fight for the right for behavioral health care to be legitimately treated on parity with other medical concerns. Right now, Kaiser continues to discount the importance of behavioral health and treats behavioral health as a second-class concern -- setting a damning and dangerous precedent for behavioral health care across the rest of the nation writ large and for us all.
