ONLINE EXCLUSIVE

  Image: NYS Nurses Association
  Jayne Cammisa, RN at WMC, displays some of the 3,000 Protests of unsafe patient care conditions nurses collected in 2012.

Half a Mile of Protests of Assignment

Westchester Medical Center (WMC) nurses filed more than 3,000 Protests of Assignment in 2012.

If you stretched them end-to-end, they would reach for more than half a mile.

And that’s exactly what nurses did this week, at rallies at Sound Shore Medical Center and Mount Vernon Hospital.

“We are glad to have a bigger partner. We need one,” said Kathy Santoiemma, RN at Sound Shore. “But we want to make sure that WMC doesn’t bring layoffs and subcontracting to our hospital. We are out here to save patient care at Sound Shore.”

“We’re here to Save Mount Vernon,” said Nancy Harvey, RN. “We need a commitment that WMC will keep this hospital open for our community.”

“WMC administrators laid off hundreds of caregivers and they are replacing them with temps,” said Jayne Cammisa, RN at WMC. “We filed over 3,000 protests of unsafe patient care conditions, and we are starting to get positive results – management has posted 50 new RN positions. But much more needs to be done.”

Nurses at WMC, Mount Vernon, and Sound Shore are coming together to speak with one strong, united voice – to Save Patient Care.

You can help. Click here to see and comment on photos from the two rallies. And share this story with other nurses, friends, and family members. 

The New York State Nurses Association is the voice for hundreds of thousands of frontline nurses. We are New York’s largest union and professional association for registered nurses.