Dozens of nurses lined the entrance to the Florida Medical Center campus of North Shore Hospital on Monday morning, holding signs saying, "We want to be heard," and "Unsafe Working Conditions." 

The major complaint is that too many patients are assigned to each nurse.
"On the night shift, we can have up to eight patients to one nurse," said Ellen Newlan, a 15-year veteran of the hospital. 

Newlan said nurses are overwhelmed and rushed, and that affects patient care.
"We heal the sick. In order for us to do a better job, we need to have a good patient ratio, better working conditions. We need to have better equipment. We need to make a difference because we are a major part of the health care in this country," Newlan said. 

“Having safe ratios will help us get back to healing and help us get back to teaching,” Intensive Care nurse Vivian Caserta said. 

The nurses’ union has been negotiating for the hospital for almost a year to improve working conditions. They feel hospital management has been unresponsive. 

“To date, we have held at least 17 days of negotiations and have five additional dates already scheduled,” Florida Medical Center said in a statement sent to Local 10. “Although it may seem like a long time, many times it takes a year or longer to successfully negotiate a first contract.” 

Nurse representatives said they feel negotiations are going nowhere and that it was time to let everyone on the outside know what was happening on the inside of their hospital. 

"We’re saying, in the interest of everybody in the community at large, it’s better that we have better patient ratios," said nurse representative Chrystal Willis.