Mount Sinai Nurses Strike On Madison Avenue: 'Enough Is Enough'

UPPER EAST SIDE, NEW YORK — "Unsafe" staffing shortages at a major Madison Avenue hospital spurred nurses to join the more than 7,000 who walked out of two New York City hospital systems Monday.

Multiple nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital on East 99th Street told Patch that that the 500-plus staffing shortage has exhausted them and endangered patients.

"It's very unsafe," Louisa Anderson told Patch. "We didn't intend to strike here. But it's just you know, enough is enough. We have to we have to get our voice heard."

Monday's walk-out came after a weekend of failed contract negotiations with Montefiore and Mount Sinai Hospital, officials with the New York State Nurses Association said.

That's why Anderson — a Cardiac Catheterization Lab nurse who's been with Mount Sinai for 11 years — said some units decided to hand off 30 patients to a pair of managers without nurses.

Other hospital systems in recent weeks and days had struck tentative agreements with the nurses' union that averted a wider strike.

"The budget ... obviously, is not enough to give us the amount of nurses needed to take care of patients," Anderson said.

Adriel Ng, 28, has been a nurse at Mount Sinai for a year and a half. He brought along his treasured Hasselblad 500C, a vintage Swedish medium format camera, to capture images of his coworkers on strike.

"There's been no change with nurse-patient ratios," he said, "it's an unsafe environment."

"I've seen new grad nurses come on to the floor and be immediately burned out after a year," Ng said. "[It's] because of the unsafe environment."

Janet Bachill, 53, has been a nurse at Mount Sinai for more than 30 years. Both her kids followed her into nursing and Erica, 23, joined her on the picket line.

Erica became a nurse, despite her mom's horror stories because she "wanted to make a difference," but was troubled by the hospital's decision to hire traveling nurses, who get higher pay but lack benefits, rather than make a longer-term commitment to staff.

Both mother and daughter hope hospital officials will return to the negotiation tables mindful of the value of her work.

"We can't provide excellent patient care if we don't have enough staff," Bachill said. "This has been happening before COVID, so they can't blame COVID."

Staff nurses were not alone on the picket line Monday as even some traveling nurses joined the protest.

A 28-year-old travel Intensive Care Unit nurse said she joined because she felts so exhausted by her commute from New Jersey (she can't afford to live in the city) and repeated twelve-hour shifts, caring for three patients, without breaks.

"I shouldn't be this tired," she said, over the supportive honks of passing vehicles, "I should be wanting to go into f---ing work.

"As an ICU nurse, you need assistants and we don't even have the assistants," she said. "Give us nurses' aides. That's why we're striking."

Alexandria Cintron, 27, a nurse for four years at Mount Sinai, agreed that safe staffing is the main demand of the strikers.

"Management makes it all about the money," said Cintron. "Management is neglecting their nurses, and by neglecting their nurses, patients are paying for it."

"At one point, we were heroes. Now we need to get the respect we deserve," Cintron said. "How can we take care of others if we can't take care of ourselves?"