Valley Medical Center’s nurses will stage informational pickets Wednesday to raise awareness about what they say are staffing levels that don’t meet patient needs.

Staffing is a key issue that has divided the nurses’ union and Valley Medical Center in contract negotiations that began in April. The current four-year contract expired on June 30; another bargaining session was planned for Thursday.

The nurses and other health-care workers, who are members of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW, will picket from 3 to 5:30 p.m. outside Valley Medical Center, 400 S. 43rd St., Renton, and will hold a community rally at 5 p.m.

The nurses and other health-care workers are not striking; union spokeswoman Linnea Riesen said members have only authorized the informational picketing, which is allowed when members are off-duty or on a break.

Also, public employees are not allowed to strike in Washington state, according to Karyn Beckley, Valley Medical’s senior vice president of human resources and marketing.

“We will be open for business as usual,” she said. “We wouldn’t want anyone to think there was an interruption in patient care.”

Beckley described the talks as collaborative, and Riesen said the union wants the issues resolved quickly.

Riesen indicated nurses could become fatigued and patient care could suffer when they must care for other nurses’ patients while they are on break or at a meal.

Riesen said workers proposed solutions, including a guarantee on a maximum patient load and a standard for safe breaks, standards that would ensure patients aren’t “doubled up,” with an additional eye on safety for both staff and patients. But she indicated Valley negotiators rejected them.

The union has recommended staffing levels for different units of the hospital, such as two patients per nurse in the Critical Care Unit and four patients per nurse during the day and evening in the Joint and Spine Unit, according to Riesen.

“As frontline nurses we are patient advocates,” said Nance Moore, a registered nurse at Valley, in a press release announcing the informational picketing.

“We want to meet all of our patient needs, but we struggle to have the right staffing to do that. Patients need guaranteed staffing standards so patients will get what they need, in every unit of the hospital,” she said.

Theresa Braungardt, Valley’s chief nursing officer, said nursing managers meet four times each day to adjust staffing levels based on patient needs and the severity of their medical situation.

“We want to get away from a set ratio because we know it doesn’t really work,” she said. The staffing level is fluid because the patient need is fluid, she said.

A nurse also has a backup available, such as a charge nurse, who can step in to help, she said, if he or she doesn’t feel their assignment is safe.

Guidelines used to determine staffing are developed by a committee that include nurses from all areas of the hospital, Braungardt said. “We have heard from the nurses that it is working well,” she said.

In the union press release, Wanda Gardner, a certified nursing assistant at Valley, said, “We struggle to have the staffing to effectively meet patient needs, whether it’s turning a patient every two hours or making sure they get up to walk.”