Around 1,000 nurses at NYU Langone Hospital—Brooklyn announced they will go on strike Saturday if hospital administrators do not address concerns about short staffing and inadequate salaries by midnight Friday, claiming that patient care quality may be inhibited by the medical center’s work environment.
The nurses, who are represented by the citywide union Federation of Nurses — a branch of the larger United Federation of Teachers — filed a memo to the hospital 10 days ahead of the scheduled strike on Feb. 18, detailing more than 8,000 grievances over the past three years and alleging that the hospital’s nurse-to-patient ratio violates New York state law and the nurses’ contract with NYU Langone Hospital—Brooklyn, according to a press release from the UFT.
Union head Anne Goldman said the hospital consistently over-admits the emergency room with more than 100 patients. Goldman said that during negotiations, administrators offered to hire 100 additional nurses to address the issue of short staffing at the hospital, but that the union calculated the addition would not meet staffing needs. However, many union members remain frustrated by the lack of details on how these nurses would be trained, a process that could take up to nine months.
“It is a moral injury to your soul when you cannot reach each patient in the appropriate way because you weren’t given the right number on your staffing team,” Goldman said in an interview with WSN. “What it does is increase the chance of making mistakes, injury and falls. This fight is about giving us what we need to succeed for patient care.”
Elvie Smith, a nurse educator at NYU Langone Hospital—Brooklyn, told WSN that currently, each nurse in the medical surgical unit is responsible for six to seven patients — despite a contracted standard at five patients per nurse. In August 2023, the union issued a complaint referencing more than 2,000 complaints related to understaffing.
Maria Paradiso, a recovery room nurse at the hospital, said the constant overflow of patients and shortage of staff have created a highly stressful environment, where many nurses feel they are unable to provide patients with the quality of care they deserve.
“We’ve made it clear to them that it’s not our job to staff the hospital. It’s their job to do that. To get a lot of kickback from them has been very frustrating,” Paradiso said. “We feel very undervalued, it’s disrespectful and these administrators just aren’t getting it.”
Smith said that the hospital should also raise nurses’ salaries to make them comparable to those at neighboring hospitals. In the press release, UFT President Michael Mulgrew criticized NYU Langone Health for spending nearly $8 million on a Super Bowl advertisement earlier this month, instead of investing it in the salaries and recruitment of nurses.
“It shows you their priority. Their priority is their brand. Being in the Super Bowl meant more than letting our good nurses who are trying so hard to serve this community be paid fairly,” Goldman said. “It’s just a shame.”
Goldman told WSN that along with hiring enough additional nurses to sufficiently address the staffing shortage, NYU Langone should also implement more extensive training sessions on patient care, equipment use and other components of the medical center’s workplace culture and expectations.
Earlier this month, NYU Langone Hospital—Brooklyn rehired nine nurses whose jobs were terminated after the hospital accused them of failing to assist a woman who gave birth in a hallway. Arbitrator James Brown ruled last month that the nurses’ failure to help was due to understaffing at the hospital.
“Salary doesn’t affect the quality of care we provide. It doesn’t prevent us as nurses from doing our jobs because we all have compassion,” Smith said. “What affects the quality of care we provide is when we’re short-staffed.”
The nurses unionized in 2016 and have consistently advocated for smaller nurse-to-patient ratios since. In 2022, the group delegated a subcommittee to specifically handle concerns around understaffing.
That same year, NYU Langone Hospital—Brooklyn became the first hospital in Brooklyn to receive Magnet recognition from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, one of the nation’s leading standards for measuring patient care quality.
“I still feel hopeful as a nurse, we’re always hoping for the best and we are very resilient,” Paradiso said. “However, we are also ready to go on strike if it comes down to it, and we have members behind us, so we’re using that energy to just push through and get the best contract we can.”
A spokesperson at NYU Langone did not respond to WSN’s request for comment. In a statement to Gothamist, the medical center said the hospital is “committed to bargaining in good faith” and is “optimistic” that its prospective agreement will support patients and staff.
Contact Amanda Chen at [email protected].
