St. Joseph's Chief Nursing Officer Resigns After 6 Months

JOLIET, IL — Margaret Carroll, the Chief Nursing Operator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Joliet, resigned on Wednesday, two hours after a new Chief Operating Officer for Ascension Health was named, a source told Patch on Wednesday.

Carroll had only been in the role since June and took over for Colleen Pawlik, who had been in the position on an interim basis after replacing Karen Gallagher in November of 2022. Pawlik was promoted to Vice President of Operations of the Joliet hospital in March, according to her LinkedIn profile.

According to the Illinois Nurses Union, Carroll was the seventh person to hold the CNO position at St. Joseph's since 2020.

A source told Patch on Wednesday that Carroll’s resignation was announced Wednesday afternoon, two hours after a new CEO for the hospital was announced. However, a hospital spokeswoman told Patch that the promotion of Jim Parobek, the interim CEO at Ascension Saint Joseph- Joliet was announced in late November and that he has been on-site since mid-December.

Caroll's resignation was announced by the hospital on Wednesday when the hospital said that Janete Sheiner had been named as the hospital's interim Chief Nursing Officer.

Carroll’s resignation comes amid St. Joseph’s nurses seeking a new contract after talks broke down between union nurses and the hospital just before the end of the year. The two sides are scheduled to meet on Friday as both sides seek a resolution to a conflict that has been ongoing since May.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Carroll previously served as the System Associate Nurse Executive for the Cook County Health System from May 2019, until she began as CNO at St. Joseph’s last summer. Before that, Carroll worked as the Associate Chief Nursing Officer at the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System in Chicago from 2015 to 2019.

Hospital officials said that the two sides were “clearly at an impasse” on Dec. 26 after nurses rejected what was said to be the hospital’s best and final contract offer. However, the Illinois Nurses Association, which represents the nurses, vehemently disagreed with the use of the term “impasse” and said it is filing unfair labor practice claims against the hospital.

The union says that the hospital forced nurses to work outside their specialized service areas on Christmas Eve. The hospital, claiming staffing shortages, said it had no choice but to ask nurses to work in other areas of the hospital from where they are normally assigned. However, the nurses said that the move was, instead, the hospital implementing a portion of the contract that was overwhelmingly rejected by 80 percent of the hospital’s nurses last month.

John Fitzgerald, the union spokesman, told Patch last week that the move was a clear sign that hospital officials are not capable of running their own hospital.

"If they don't know how to run a hospital, they shouldn't run a hospital in Will County," Fitzgerald told Patch last week.

Hospital officials said that despite offering their best and final contract offer last month, they are willing to return to the bargaining table this week hoping to iron out a new contract.

“Meeting the needs of our community and our patients is our highest priority,” hospital officials said in a statement released through a spokesperson last week. “Those needs require us to recruit, hire, and retain more nurses, which means we need to move beyond this impasse and implement a new contract and competitive wage structure."