An article in the March 30, 2019, edition of The New York Times, by author, Patrick McGeehan, was entitled, “Nurses Strike in New York: Threat Increases Over ‘Safe Staffing’ Levels” . In the article, McGeehan described that: “At Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in New York City, the 58 tiny beds for sick newborns are almost always filled. But nurses who work there say there are often too few of them to provide all of the care the babies, and their worried families, need.” The article continued: “‘I’m often put in a situation where I’m having to choose between patients and not able to fully support my families,’ Ms. Murphy said. ‘We have a family-centered care model, but I cannot do that under these current conditions.’” This is bringing on a labor dispute: “Now, she (Murphy) and more than 10,000 nurses are demanding a sharp increase in their ranks at three of the city’s biggest hospital systems — Mount Sinai, NewYork-Presbyterian and Montefiore. Their union, the New York State Nurses Association, has threatened to strike over staffing levels, an issue that has become an increasing source of contention at hospitals around the country.”
[Karine Raymond, a nurse at a hospital in the Bronx and a union negotiator, said nurses at three of the city’s biggest hospital systems are “almost drive-by nursing.” Image © Elias Williams for The New York Times, 2019. All Rights Reserved.]
The action is being taken because, according to McGeehan, “the alliance’s offer was far from sufficient to yield enough staff members to provide proper care in all areas of the hospitals.” The article cited, “Karine Raymond,” who is, “a nurse in the cardiac catheterization lab at a Montefiore hospital in the Bronx and a negotiator for the union.” According to Raymond, “each of the three hospital systems needs at least 300 to 400 additional nurses.” She went on to say that the neonatal unit, “should have about 30 nurses on duty — one for every newborn whose condition is unstable and one for every two who are ‘getting ready to go home’ — but often has only about 25.”
Ms. Raymond was quoted as saying that, “after no progress was made on the issue at a recent negotiating session, some nurses felt they had been ‘hoodwinked’ by the alliance. The article indicated that if, “nurses were to walk out, the hospitals would have to bring in thousands of replacements from around the country at a cost of several million dollars. In a letter to their chief executives, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and several other council members urged the hospitals not to let the impasse reach the point of a ‘reckless and needless shutdown of our hospitals.'” However, most importantly, according to McGeehan’s reporting, the “letter said the staffing agencies that would provide the replacements were ‘ill-equipped and not competent’ to provide adequate care. ‘More patients will die and more patients will suffer needless adverse health effects,’ it concluded.”
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Dalli & Marino, LLP is closely watching the staffing situation in New York’s care facilities and its potential impact on families. Our team has provided since 1995, and continues to provide, top-tier representation, and we have recovered millions of dollars, for families in cases of inadequate care leading to health concerns for children and other patients/residents in healthcare provider facilities. Our expertise is in representing families in New York City, Suffolk and Nassau Counties, (Long Island), Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, and Westchester County.
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