Upstate nurses beat back downsizing
As New Yorkers went on “PAUSE” and hospitals braced for a surge of COVID-19 patients, Champlain Valley Physician’s Hospital (CVPH) in Plattsburgh, and St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Utica notified dozens of nurses with the New York State Nurses Association that they will be forced off the job.
Nursing shortages are anticipated in the COVID-19 pandemic, and Governor Cuomo recently put out a call for retired nurses to return to service to help manage the influx of COVID-19 patients expected in New York State, the epicenter of the Coronavirus pandemic in the U.S.
Nurses are essential
At the same time, CVPH identified 59 RNs as “non-essential.” St. Elizabeth’s placed four OR nurses on indefinite leave, and took over 50 additional nurses off their scheduled shifts.
“Nurses are essential. It makes no sense to furlough nurses right now,” said CVPH RN and Executive Committee Co-Chair Dea Lacey, RN. “We met with management and relayed our concerns about downsizing nurses and other ancillary staff. After we insisted through daily meetings, we finally heard that all nurses would be retained.”
CVPH also informed nurses that they would begin receiving COVID-19 patients from downstate hospitals that are filled beyond capacity.
The St. Elizabeth nurses that were threated with furlough are critical care certified and have requested multiple times to be cross-trained to staff units anticipated to surge with COVID-19 cases in the coming weeks. Their requests had gone ignored by hospital management until recently.
Bill Ferguson, RN, who works in St. Elizabeth Medical Center’s PACU unit and is the LBU President shared his concerns at emergency Labor-Management meetings in March.
“How can my hospital be preparing for a surge of COVID-19 patients when nurses are worried about losing their jobs?” said Ferguson. “We know this pan-demic is serious and it’s only a matter of time before we have PUIs or COVID-19 positive patients in Utica.”
St. Elizabeth backed down, and promised to follow the contract limits on low census days and keep nurses on their shifts. These RNs are now in the process of cross-training to Med-Surg and Telemetry units to assist in the surge.
“I’m just glad that management saw the light and is working with us to keep on our dedicated nurses and prepare for this thing together,” said St. Elizabeth’s Concetta Reginelli, RN.
Nurses ready to act
NYSNA is hearing reports from nurses at other hospitals in Upstate New York that volunteer furloughs, lay-offs or other reductions of the nursing workforce are being considered by hospital administration.
Nurses are ready to make them reconsider, especially since earlier this month Congress passed a COVID-19 stimulus bill, which gave $100 billion in emergency funding to hospitals bracing for coronavirus, partly to offset the loss of revenue from elective procedures.
St. Elizabeth nurses insist on helping prepare for the COVID-19 surge
Nurses win in Western NY
We are seeing an increase in hospitalized cases across the region. The recent increase was higher in areas that are in closer proximity to NYC. Erie County has a high number of COVID-19 cases (380) but very few requiring hospitalization for the time being. North Country and Central New York Hospitals are starting to get positive cases in their counties and continuing to prepare for what’s to come.
We have several facilities (ECMC, CVPH, VBMC, Ellis, Elizabethtown, Adirondack Medical Center and PHC) that are having daily meetings (some many times a day) to discuss the concerns of the members and to keep us informed of the most recent information. There are still employers who outright refuse to involve the RNs and the union in the day to day planning (Albany Med, Nathan Littauer).
ECMC has agreed to hotel rooms for RNs that are working with PUIs or COVID-19 positive patients. Ellis Hospital is working on locking in hotel rooms for their staff as well, along with ensuring the designated COVID-19 units are being provided with food and showers for after shift.
The Employers that were trying to furlough RNs have backed off and are coming up with plans to cross train the nurses or are allowing for voluntary low census days. North Country facilities associated with UVHN want to give employees a bonus of one weeks pay.
A universal concern is the limited supply of PPE and testing. Lack of ability to properly protect yourself and be tested once exposed or potentially exposed is compounding the concerns and anxiety surrounding front line staff. Several facilities that have been waiting on supplies for weeks, stated they have not come in and that they were redirected to the city. The majority of facilities have their PPE locked.
Some area non union hospitals in the capital region have issued policies that ALL staff can wear a surgical mask or even homemade ones. Our Employers are not allowing homemade masks or the use of personal supplies at this time. Many facilities will be receiving overflow COVID-19 patients from NYC facilities, which will only escalate the concerns over the limited supply of PPE.
At SIUH: Danger and Dedication in the ED
NYSNA member Christina Aviles works as a registered nurse in the ED at Northwell Health’s Staten Island University Hospital (SIUH). Working as a registered nurse is a demanding job. Working twelve hour shifts, most of it on your feet, caring for patients who are often old and, as their presence in a health care facility indicates, infirm. It can be physically exhausting and emotionally draining; more so if you happen to work in the emergency department of a level one trauma center.
On the frontlines
Now, as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps through New York City like a wildfire through so much dry tinder wood, Christina finds herself on the frontlines in a battle against an intensely contagious and invisible threat that is ravaging much of the world.
Here in the United States, a shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) remains the single biggest issue registered nurses and other health care professionals have faced in the struggle to care for COVID-19 patients. You hear it from medical and health care providers everywhere: It’s like fighting a war without ammo. Many city hospitals are running dangerously low on PPE, including the N95 masks which are the most effective way to filter the droplets that are expelled when an infected person coughs; some RNs have been reduced to tying bandannas around their faces. Even facilities that appear to have enough of the masks are keeping a close eye on them. At SIUH’s Emergency Room, N95 masks are kept in management offices and must be signed out by front line health care staff. They are told to reuse the masks for up to a week, but experts do not consider this a safe practice.
Professional judgement
LBU Executive Committee members Dawn Cardello and Michelle Pittman lead a march on the SIUH Command Center to press NYSNA demands. |
NYSNA is telling members that they should use their professional judgment as RNs in assessing whether a mask has been compromised or soiled in any way, and to discard it if it has. Some RNs, in cohort situations, are opting for extended use of the mask—keeping the same mask on for an entire shift—which is preferred over reuse as a way of maintaining a mask’s integrity.
In the meantime, RNs working in SIUH’s emergency room are worried: about exposing themselves; about exposing their families; about exposing their patients. Within the first week of seeing PUI patients in the emergency room eight NYSNA nurses that work there were exposed and put on quarantine. The risks are real and so too are the stress and anxiety of the nurses working there.
Ms. Aviles states that she goes to bed thinking about it every night. Then she dreams about it. And when she wakes up, it’s the first thing she thinks about every morning. And with good reason: she’s three months pregnant. At present it’s unclear how much risk there is for a fetus carried by a mother who is exposed or infected with COVID-19. But for a nurse working in a busy emergency room it’s all too real. Still, Christina Aviles shows up for her shift, puts on her mask, and gets to work.
Harlem Hospital RNs demand more resources
Nurses and supporters protest outside |
Nurses at NYC H+H/Harlem Hospital rallied on April 6 to demand more PPE, more nurses, and more resources to tackle the COVID-19 crisis. They were joined in solidarity by NYSNA nurses from other public and private hospitals, as well as respiratory therapists, social workers, teachers and other union members.
Sarah Dowd, Harlem Hospital RN, said “This is a tragedy, without a doubt. But we’re here to fight because we deserve better. We’re calling on Dr. Katz to provide us with some immediate assistance, including a new N95 mask for every shift. There’s no data that suggests that masks are effective with this duration of use. Right now there is a huge population of our hospital workforce that is out sick and that has reduced our capacity to care for the patients.”
Nurses to Monty: Do the right thing!
Dozens of NYSNA nurses at Montefiore hospital demanded safe PPE at a press conference in the Bronx on April 2.
Maintaining the appropriate six feet distance, NYSNA nurse leaders demanded that the hospital and government send nurses into the battle against COVID-19 with the right equipment.
While nurse pressure has pushed Montefiore to move to daily distribution of masks, gowns, and shields in many areas of the facilities, some nurses still do not have what they need.
Putting nurses and patients at risk
Montefiore nurses protest, April 2. |
Managers are sending nurses into unfamiliar areas without proper training, putting everyone at risk. Even worse, management is saying they will collect used PPE and try experimental, unproven techniques to reuse the PPE.
Nurses said they don’t want to be guinea pigs.
Members want the hospitals to secure the appropriate safety equipment, and if they can’t, they say that the government must put people to work making it.
“I am angry right now, because President Trump has the power to manufacture more PPE,” said Una Davis, RN, a Montefiore Moses NYSNA delegate. “He could have done it weeks ago, yet he continues to delay and play games with our lives. We are appealing to our federal, state and local government and hospital administration to hear our pleas for personal protective equipment.”
Benny Mathew works in the Moses ED. He became positive for COVID-19 because frontline healthcare workers like him did not have appropriate masks and gowns along with strict protocols. “Even though we knew the horrific accounts from Wuhan and Northern Italy, Montefiore executives were not proactive or even reactive when suspected COVID-19 patients started to arrive,” he said.
Fighting for everyone
Monte Bronx nurses know the crisis in their communities started long before COVID-19 hit the scene. Even during a pandemic, Montefiore is trying to move ahead to close Mount Vernon hospital and the governor’s Medicaid Redesign Team is threatening to cut hundreds of millions from healthcare budgets.
Now, as they struggle to save lives, the fight is for everyone.
“This health care system is broken. And it is broken on purpose! For too long, making money came before keeping our community safe,” said Patricia Armand, Hutch CRNA and NYSNA delegate. “We are in the middle of a crisis and we need to act like it. We need a health care system that prioritizes people not profits. GET ME PPE!!!”
