New York nurses rallied Wednesday on the steps of City Hall over what they are calling a staffing crisis in city hospitals.
The noon gathering of NYSNA members came directly before a City Council oversight hearing on the state of nursing in NYC, including what many feel is a dangerously low level of nurses on staff. Nurses at the rally charged that the issue is a literal matter of life and death that puts patients at risk due to the lack of hands on deck.
“Mount Sinai Health System currently has 800 nursing vacancies, 800 vacancies, and this is not new. They’ve had over 700 nursing vacancies for over a year now and they do nothing about it,” Matt Allen, a nurse at Mount Sinai said. “All they see is the millions they are saving by allowing these vacancies to go unfilled. They don’t see the patients at all. They don’t see the bed-bound patient waiting 20 to 30 minutes for a sip of water because that nurse is taking care of 12 other patients.”