NYSNA Launches New Statewide Staffing Committee
In 2021, NYSNA nurses and healthcare workers won groundbreaking legislation that established safe staffing standards at all hospitals in New York state. But since then, some hospitals and employers have continued to understaff units, prioritizing profits over patients and putting care at risk for all New Yorkers. While some nurses have been successful at pushing back against unsafe staffing levels, some hospitals continue to be chronically short staffed.
In an effort to support nurses seeking to improve staffing conditions and to create a resource hub for staffing-related issues across the state, NYSNA members voted at our 2025 Convention to establish a Statewide Staffing Committee — a space for members to connect, share challenges they’re facing, and work together on potential solutions to enforce and improve New York’s safe staffing law.
New Statewide Staffing Committee
NYSNA is excited to announce that, this spring, the new Statewide Staffing Committee launched, with members holding their first meeting in mid-March. The committee is comprised of members from NYSNA facilities across New York state. On March 19, 65 members met via Zoom, where they reviewed how New York’s safe staffing law works and discussed best practices and challenges around creating staffing plans, participating in hospital-based staffing committees, filing New York State Department of Health (DOH) complaints and using the law in conjunction with our union contract-based staffing enforcement tools.
Margaret Franks, MSN, RN, MEDSURG-BC, former NYSNA Treasurer and current NYSNA healthcare staffing coordinator, said: “Launching the new Statewide Staffing Committee is incredibly exciting. As a NYSNA member and former staffing captain at Northwell/Vassar Brothers Medical Center, I know how difficult it can be to manage chronic understaffing and effectively enforce the safe staffing law. Alongside my fellow Vassar nurses, though, we were able to successfully track staffing on our units, prompt an investigation from the DOH and ultimately work with hospital management on a corrective action plan. I hope that all NYSNA members will engage with this new committee, whether they have already made improvements to staffing at their facility or are fighting that battle, in order to protect patient care for all New Yorkers.”
A New Online Resource for Safe Staffing
In addition to forming the new Statewide Staffing Committee, NYSNA has also launched a new section of the website dedicated to the committee’s work. In the My Membership section of the website, NYSNA members will now find minutes from committee meetings as well as information, resources and case studies on how NYSNA members can use New York’s safe staffing law to effect change at their facilities.
Members will also find a new, interactive feature in the Statewide Staffing Committee section of the website — commenting! NYSNA members from across the state will now be able to engage with one another by commenting on posts in this section. We hope that this will encourage dialogue between members with the goal of sharing information and strategies and improving staffing at NYSNA facilities across New York. Franks will moderate comments.
Continuing the Fight to Improve Staffing and Protect Patient Care
Nurses know that healthcare facilities continually cut corners to shore up their bottom line — too often at the expense of safe staffing. As patient advocates, first and foremost, nurses and healthcare workers have a responsibility to push back on the shortcuts that put our patients at risk. We hope that members will engage with the new Statewide Staffing Committee to find new solutions and strategies for improving staffing at their facilities and, ultimately, ensuring safe, quality patient care for all New Yorkers.
We encourage members to check out the Statewide Staffing Committee section of My Membership at https://www.nysna.org/my-membership#staffing, to review the resources there and to get involved in the fight for safe staffing at your facility. Each July, our employers review and revise clinical staffing plans and submit these to the DOH for approval, so there’s no time like the present to get reacquainted with the staffing law and the ways NYSNA members can work to improve staffing at every NYSNA facility!