WORCESTER, Mass. - Nurses at Saint Vincent Hospital are speaking out after releasing hundreds of recently-filed complaints regarding patient safety.

More than 600 complaints have been sent to state and federal agencies since July, with more than 100 filed in January alone.

Within these complaints, allegations include unattended patients suffering injuries from falls, a pregnant woman in labor waiting more than five hours for a C-section and patients lying in their own waste for extended periods of time.

Marlena Pellegrino, a staff nurse and co-chair of the nurses’ local bargaining unit with the Massachusetts Nurses Association, said nurses feel their concerns are being met with resistance, retaliation and punitive actions.

“Patients are suffering and it can no longer be accepted,” Pellegrino said. “It’s accepted by this administration as a normal working basis, and patients in our community deserve better. We’re putting ourselves at risk because our patients are at risk every day and it just can’t go on any longer.”

Vickie Lynn Peck had been a nurse for 11 years, but said on Wednesday, she resigned. It was a difficult choice for her, adding she respects and admires the nurses she worked with.

“I think it all boiled down to the fact that as a nurse, I am responsible ultimately for the safety of my patients in accepting these unsafe assignments,” she said. “It is going to fall back on me. And I just became exhausted and was worried that I was going to make a mistake and that that would be my cross to bear.”

Saint Vincent Hospital declined to comment on nurses’ complaints outlined in the MNA’s press conference on Wednesday.

Katie Murphy, president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, believes the situations described by nurses at Saint Vincent Hospital are a symptom of a more widespread crisis facing the health care system.

“While this is the worst case, it's not the only case, and it simply serves as the best example of how corporate greed and administrative malpractice, how understaffing by design to boost profit margins, is destroying our hospital systems,” Murphy said. “From Cape Cod to the Berkshires, it’s creating a shortage of nurses unwilling to work under these conditions and leaving the most vulnerable in our state at risk for serious harm.”

The Massachusetts Nurses Association also claimed the Department of Public Health was on site at Saint Vincent Hospital on Wednesday to investigate a preventable patient death. A hospital spokesperson declined to confirm or comment on their claim.

The MNA also claims in response to nurses’ complaints, three nurses were fired and six were suspended, prompting the union to file charges of unfair labor practice and prepare a whistleblower complaint.