New York City nurses strike to continue into 3rd day for 2 hospitals
The city is monitoring the strike at the two hospital systems, which account for 16% of all hospital beds in the city
NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- The nurses strike in New York City will continue for a third day on Wednesday, with no contract agreement yet between the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) and two hospitals, Mount Sinai Main and Montefiore Bronx.
It comes after picketing started again at 7 a.m. on Tuesday at four locations.
Talks resumed at Montefiore Monday afternoon, and although an agreement was not reached, both sides had indicated they were close and continued their negotiations on Tuesday.
Mount Sinai and NYSNA have not returned to the table since breaking off at 1 a.m. Monday, and no new talks are scheduled.
The union also announced that Flushing Hospital Medical Center, Richmond University Medical Center, and BronxCare all approved their contracts.
As many as 3,500 nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and about 3,600 at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan walked off the job Monday after last-minute talks to prevent the strike broke down.
On Tuesday afternoon, Mount Sinai's Chief Nursing Officer Frances Cartwright, RN, Ph.D told Eyewitness News that there is room for negotiation on staffing ratios. Not one specific ratio-but a range of ratios, suggesting a breakthrough is possible:
"We're on the same page with our grids in terms of how many nurses we should have on the units. Where we're not on the same page is how we're going to have enforcement about you know, getting those numbers there. We don't want to put ourselves in a situation where that's fixed, where nurses can't use their critical thinking abilities to say, 'You know what? You take two patients, and I'll take those two extra because I have patients who are stable and are going home and your patients are sicker.' We want nurses to be able to do that."
NYSNA says members had to strike because chronic understaffing leaves them caring for too many patients.
Jed Basubas said he generally attends to eight to 10 patients at a time, twice the ideal number in the units where he works. Nurse practitioner Juliet Escalon said she sometimes skips bathroom breaks to attend to patients.
So does Ashleigh Woodside, who said her 12-hour operating-room shifts often stretch to 14 hours because short staffing forces her and others to work overtime.
"We love our job. We want to take care of our patients. But we just want to do it safely and in a humane way, where we feel appreciated," Woodside said.
The hospitals said they had offered the same raises - totaling 19% over three years - that the union had accepted at several other facilities where contract talks reached tentative agreements in recent days.
Montefiore said it had agreed to add 170 more nurses.
Mount Sinai's administration said the union's focus on nurse-to-patient ratios "ignores the progress we have made to attract and hire more new nurses, despite a global shortage of healthcare workers that is impacting hospitals across the country."
The city is monitoring the strike at the two hospital systems, which account for 16% of all hospital beds in the city. Montefiore accounts for more than half of the beds in the Bronx.
The overall effect on the city's hospital system appear to be minor so far.
Hospitals are said to be busy but managing, a city official said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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