Hospital management says it is doing what it can given a national nursing shortage. They said nurses will return only if the hospital agrees to improving working conditions. At Montefiore, patients are kept in hallways so often that management has installed televisions there, the union said. The Covid pandemic, which is now being accompanied by a surge in winter admissions of patients with flu and R.S.V., compounded the strain.Īt Mount Sinai, union leaders said, emergency room nurses can care for as many as 18 patients at a time. The problem of understaffing at hospitals has been building for years, with nurses leaving emergency rooms and in-patient wards for higher paying jobs as temporary nurses or less stressful positions in outpatient settings. “This has been going on even before the pandemic,” she added, “and the pandemic just blew the whole thing open.” Vivas said she was often caring for three or four patients at a time in intensive care instead of the one or two she is supposed to. Letitia James, the state attorney general, and Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president, were among the officials standing with the strikers. Vivas joined her fellow nurses, union leaders and local elected officials on the picket line in front of Mount Sinai, wearing bright red hats and scarves and shouting over the sounds of air horns and cheers. “We are not out here for wages, we are out here because we want patient safety,” said Lorena Vivas, who has been a nurse for 19 years. Nurses, who both saw how valued they were during the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, and who struggled with exhaustion and burnout, said they were standing their ground to improve conditions both for themselves and their patients. Monday’s labor action, involving more than 7,000 nurses, represented the largest nursing strike in decades in New York City, and comes as nurses are increasingly turning toward walk outs as a labor strategy, both nationally and abroad. Nurses at eight other city hospitals were able to reach tentative contract deals and did not strike. Nurses also went out on strike at the three campuses of the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx over similar issues of pay and staffing. Monday after talks with Mount Sinai management broke down in the early morning hours. The nurses, members of the New York State Nurses Association, went on strike at 6 a.m. Hundreds of striking nurses and their supporters lined both sides of Madison Avenue in front of Mount Sinai Hospital on Monday, waving signs, blowing horns and calling for a labor contract that will require more nurses at the bedside for patients.
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