(NewsNation) — Thousands of nurses in Texas and Kansas will hit the picket lines Tuesday as part of their efforts to support contract negotiations addressing a chronic staffing shortage and workplace safety.

However, the hospital system emphasizes that providing health care is a top priority and assures it has a plan to avoid any disruptions.

The National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United represents registered nurses who unanimously voted to authorize a one-day strike, frustrated by the working conditions across three Ascension hospitals. 

Among the 2,000 are registered nurses at Ascension via Christi St. Joseph Hospital (Wichita, Kan.) Ascension via Christi St. Francis Hosptial (Witchita, Kan.) and Ascension Stention Medical Center (Austin, Texas)

A strike at three Ascension Seton medical centers would be the first nurses’ strike in an acute care setting, as well as the largest nurses’ strike in Texas history, according to the release from the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United.

The strike will start at 6:45 a.m. Tuesday and last 24 hours, excluding a three-hour heat break in the afternoon.

“Being able to strike for one day because Ascension refused to meet with us and provide a contract that covers all of that including safety for our patients is worth it to kind of send that message that we’re not going to put up with this,” said Whitney Steinike, a registered nurse at St. Joseph Hospital.

Steinike highlighted the growing difficulty of delivering high-quality health care services.

“You have nurses that are put in situations where they are taking eight or nine patients, somebody’s mother, brother, sister and they’re not able to give them the quality care they need and that they deserve,” she said. 

The union said that management has disregarded their concerns, which encompass a range of issues including “inadequate training, to a delayed response to hospital alarms and crying babies.” 

Nurses in Austin will be joined by hundreds of their counterparts in Wichita, Kansas as they, too, have overwhelmingly agreed to participate in a walkout.

Ascension Seton management expressed their disappointment in a statement: “While as a ministry of the Catholic church, we affirm the right of our associates to organize, we are disappointed that National Nurses United made the decision to proceed with a strike especially given the hardship this presents for our associates and families.”  

They’ve informed that nurses who don’t report to work Tuesday won’t be able to return until July 1.

Strikers assert that the threat of a lockout is merely a scare tactic and won’t deter them from persisting in their fight. They are hopeful to continue where their colleagues in Oregon left off.

“We know that the nurses’ and caregivers’ working conditions is our patients’ healing condition,” said Tammy Cline, with the Oregon Nurses Association. 

Nurses in Portland have returned to work after a five-day strike, which aimed to advocate for improved wages, affordable health care and increased time off.

Hospital officials are standing by their decision to hire replacement workers to fill in. 

The nurse’s union and hospital officials are engaged in a dispute over the allegation that the Providence Health System violated state law by hiring individuals whom nurses claim to be “professional strike-breakers.”

Although the strike has ended, the battle over health care worker conditions continues.

In the case of the nurses’ strike in Texas and Kansas, they’re confronting Ascension, which happens to be one of the largest systems in the nation.

It was also highlighted in a December investigation by The New York Times that staffing shortages were a result of years of employee cuts prioritizing financial gains over adequate staffing levels.