I didn't make it over to Methodist Hospital to talk to any of the striking nurses yesterday. Luckily the Brooklyn Paper did.
As reported here, they were protesting the shortage of nurses at the hospital and a terrible—and potentially dangerous—nurse to patient ratio.
The nurses’ contract — which mandates one nurse for a maximum of six
patients — expired on Sunday night, so staffers picketed the Park Slope
institution the next day, complaining that the hospital employs one
nurse for every 10 patients.
patients — expired on Sunday night, so staffers picketed the Park Slope
institution the next day, complaining that the hospital employs one
nurse for every 10 patients.
Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job keep it up!!
This is a topic near to my heart. My wife is an RN at Methodist.
There are 40 beds on her med/surg unit, four nurses to a shift. All beds are usually filled, with discharges and admissions taking place throughout the day (which means that nurses often have to deal with MORE than 10 individuals per shift). In her two years there I don’t recall her ever having less than 6 patients. Simple math reveals that at these ratios, a patient could only receive 6-10 minutes of attention from their RN per hour. Shifts are technically 12.5 hours long, but most nurses stay longer in order to get their work done. My wife gets there early in order to get a head start and is sometimes there 2 hours after her shift ends wrapping up loose ends.
Understaffed? Yeah, I’d say so! It is outrageous that Methodist can get away with overworking these dedicated healthcare professionals. And it’s clearly a risk to patients when exhausted nurses (not to mention doctors) are struggling to keep up with their workload.
FWIW she handed out leaflets detailing this situation on 7th ave on behalf of her union (on her own time) but — not surprisingly — few people took one. THANK YOU for helping to raise awareness of this important community issue.
If anyone reading this is concerned, I urge you to contact Mark Mundy (Methodist CEO) at mmundy@nym.org and ask him to increase RN staffing!
You should try the emergency room.Waits as long as 80 mins to see triage nurse.Just go in and see how it operates.Go in for a high fever or anything other condition it should be illegal to make people wait hours in there without care.Just sit there and watch the wait even after they call you and send you into the area where the doctors and nurses are see how long before somebody comes to see you,40 mins.How about the wait to register you 2 hours.
You should try the emergency room.Waits as long as 80 mins to see triage nurse.Just go in and see how it operates.Go in for a high fever or anything other condition it should be illegal to make people wait hours in there without care.Just sit there and watch the wait even after they call you and send you into the area where the doctors and nurses are see how long before somebody comes to see you,40 mins.How about the wait to register you 2 hours.
You should try the emergency room.Waits as long as 80 mins to see triage nurse.Just go in and see how it operates.Go in for a high fever or anything other condition it should be illegal to make people wait hours in there without care.Just sit there and watch the wait even after they call you and send you into the area where the doctors and nurses are see how long before somebody comes to see you,40 mins.How about the wait to register you 2 hours.
Methodist Hospital laid off approximately 30 new nurses last year, my sister was one of them. They hired them, many fresh out of nursing school, and then one month later, got rid of them. This was almost a year ago, right after Bear Stearns, and right before the massive cross-sector lay offs we are dealing with now. The new nurses provided great relief to the more seasoned nurses, so this was huge blow to an already understaffed hospital. The day before Methodist had group-fired the new nurses, my sister clipped a magazine article about nursing as one of the only recession-proof jobs in our economy. Not at Methodist. If this is about saving money, are they hoping that potential malpractice suits and labor suits, will cost less than the cost of paying for an adequate nurse to patient ratio?