Nurses hold signs outside Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital on Monday, the first day of the strike.
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Nurses hold signs outside Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital on Monday, the first day of the strike.
Image of Michael M. Santiago/Getty
Nurses at two of New York City’s largest hospitals are entering the third day of a strike over contract negotiations.
More than 7,000 nurses from Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx have joined the walk this week. They are not only asking for an increase in wages, but also for improving the level of personnel.
“Bosses have pushed us to strike by refusing to take our proposals seriously to address the desperate crisis of unsafe staff harming our patients, ” speak New York State Nurses Association, a union representing workers.
There are hundreds of nursing positions vacant at two prominent hospitals, WNYC reporter Caroline Lewis to NPR in Monday. Many nurses, protracted by the COVID-19 pandemichave left their jobs to take on more lucrative tourism nursing roles or quit altogether.
Striking workers say their hospitals have not hired and kept enough nurses, creating staffing shortages that reduce the quality of patient care. They talked about the beds left in the crowded corridors and nurses are forced to care several dozen patients at a time.
Personnel issues are not unique to New York City, with a Mount Sinai official call it’s “a national workforce crisis.” Plus, an aging population is putting a strain on the country’s entire healthcare system: the United States Project Labor Statistics Department that the United States needs more than 275,000 nurses between 2020 and 2030.
Jennifer Mensik Kennedy is the president of American Nurses Association, a professional organization. Emphasizing that a strike is a last resort, she said Morning version on Wednesday that actions taken in New York “reflect the experiences and feelings of many nurses across the nation.”
“What is happening today is that these workplace challenges predate COVID-19 and nurses have had to go through many of these challenges for decades,” she said. “And the current stress of COVID-19 and other public health emergencies only exacerbates many of the existing challenges and problems.”
She spoke with NPR’s Dwane Brown about the root of the problem and what to do to address it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Featured interview
On systemic issues that have created staff shortages
We have experienced a shortage of nurses for decades. And right now we have the population aging, we have the baby boomers who are aging. We have many options for nurses – for women – to transition into other professions. And we lack the faculty that is able to attract those nursing students. For example, we have … many people who want to go to nursing school who can’t enroll in nursing school because they don’t have one. enough room…
… Usually, newly graduated nurses will make more money than the instructors teaching them. So we have to deal with problems like that. Why would someone want to come and teach if their newly graduated nurses will make more money than they do right out of school?
About what hospitals can do to prevent shortages
We definitely need more nurses. But what we found [over] decades of research and programming is when we have a really good working environment for nurses — where nurses are appreciated, nurses are heard, and nurses can provide safe care , quality — those hospitals, those institutions, don’t experience shortages like other hospitals do. There are solutions that organizations can come up with to attract nurses and retain nurses. And nurses will go to institutions where they feel valued and they feel that at the end of the day, at the end of this shift, that they can provide good quality care to everyone.
What about a long-term solution?
The American Nurses Association shares the frustration of nurses about the lack of solutions. And we’ve actually worked with decision-makers across organizations and across the country to say, you know, we really need to address and address safety issues. . We need to look at how we can address attracting more nurses as faculty and address the shortage of faculty. And we also need to consider the working environment and encourage nurses to continue working as nurses and not quit. And we want nurses to be nurses throughout their careers. So those are the three areas that I think we can really focus on to create sustainable change.
The audio for this story was produced by Julie Depenbrock and Chad Campbell, and edited by John Helton.
