Perhaps the big lesson to be learned from the ongoing meltdown at Tri-City Medical Center is "buyer beware."

Tri-City's board majority -- the one that's running roughshod over open meeting laws, the public trust and common decency -- is the one that was elected in November with the active and enthusiastic support of the nurses and other employee unions.

It is the unions' candidates, now board members, who have created havoc since they took office after November's election. They suspended eight top administrators before any investigation was launched, nearly lost their liability insurance and have conducted an inordinate amount of the public's business in secrecy.

Things are to the point where the very employees who backed the board are now trying to distance themselves from their own candidates. Two weeks ago, more than 300 nurses signed a public letter arguing that the board's behavior did not reflect the values of the nurses and other health-care workers at the hospital.

But the nurses union can't wash its hands of responsibility for this mess so easily.

As reported in the North County Times in late October, the United Healthcare Workers West and the California Nurses Association spent some $44,000 on mailers supporting the current board majority. The unions, which represent about 1,100 nurses and other non-physician health-care staff at the hospital, also manned telephone banks, calling voters and urging them to vote for the unions' slate.

And the unions got what they wanted: All four of their candidates -- incumbents Kathleen Sterling and RoseMarie Reno and challengers Charlene Anderson and George Coulter -- won.

And those four have voted together to suspend top administrators and hold board meetings in secrecy, often in 4-3 decisions, with the other three board members dissenting strenuously.

So it's going to take more than a hand-wringing letter to the public to absolve the unions and their membership for this mess.

Do I think the union members thought this is what would happen if their candidates won? Is this what they wanted?

That's unlikely.

However, they're still at least partly responsible: They put their prestige and reputations on the line when they argued to voters that these four people were best qualified to run the public hospital.

Things are unlikely to improve any time soon. Most recently, last week the hospital admitted that patient traffic was down a minimum of 9 percent in January, leading to a likely $6 million to $9 million budget shortfall for the fiscal year.

The administration blames the lower patient count on the sale of a large Oceanside medical practice to Scripps, which is now referring all non-emergency surgeries to Scripps Encinitas.

While that is undoubtedly a factor, and one the previous administration should have probably better anticipated and planned for (as the current leadership charges), you can't escape the fact that the ongoing turmoil is also driving patients away.

When your health is on the line, who wants to go to a hospital that's constantly in the news for all the wrong reasons?

Contact staff writer Jim Trageser at jtrageser@nctimes.com or (760) 740-5408.

Additional information:

OCEANSIDE: Tri-City says it is facing big budget shortfall (Jan. 30)

OCEANSIDE: Nurses defend care at Tri-City (Jan. 27)

OCEANSIDE: Attorneys disagree on whether Tri-City board broke law (Jan. 7)

OCEANSDIDE: Unions spend big on Tri-City board race (Oct. 26)