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MasterDave t1_j3lt69z wrote

everyone's about to fuck around and find out.

Sure wish the directors could be held directly responsible for anyone who dies due to a lack of nurses available. It would be nice to see them have some prision time in their endless quest for profits in the healthcare system.

Just fucking hire more nurses, pay them better and treat them with respect. It ain't fucking hard.

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MasterDave t1_j3m58f3 wrote

I think people are -already- dying because of this. This isn't a new concern, hospitals have been understaffed for the last 2 years minimum, even longer in reality.

Most of the time nobody gives a shit since it's just been old people that have been the majority of the corpses and we've decided as a society that "fuck old people" is just fine in the last couple years. A nurse shortage and now a nurse outage has pretty clear implications with regards to responding to acute problems in a hospital, not to mention the inability to properly diagnose new patients.

Doctors are good and all, but the nurse is the first line of defense and gets paid fuck all for doing it. The doctors just come in, read the nurse's notes and do their best most of the time. Bad info in, bad treatment out.

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OmenCrow t1_j3mk19a wrote

In case it isn’t obvious, please avoid Mount Sinai for emergency care services until this is resolved. The ED and inpatient floors will be significantly understaffed with traveling nurses who do not necessarily have experience in the areas they are working in. And support the nurses advocating for safe staffing ratios and fair compensation!

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workaccountrabbit t1_j3mn7ph wrote

It's not lack of pay, it's lack of nurses. NYSNA said as such, the time of empty promises is over. The ratio of nurses to patients is unsafe at nearly 20 to 1 at times. My job has almost 500 opening for nurses, it's a systematic choice they are making by refusing to staff accordingly. Unfortunately for them Nurses are much more irreplaceable than other positions so now the hospital is suffering due to their lack of care.

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vuelies_queen t1_j3moean wrote

Not about pay. Pay comes secondary to Enforcement of Safe Staffing ratios. You ask these nurses on the picket lines what they’re fighting for:

Safe staffing. I don’t know what state your BIL works in but these hospitals in New York City are severely understaffed. Only California in the whole nation has an actual LAW on set nurse to patient ratios.

Regular floor mount Sinai nurses have been taking care of 6-8 pts, a lot of ICU nurses had 1:3/1:4 these past couple of years which is incredibly unsafe.

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TheWhalersOnTheMoon t1_j3ms58d wrote

Honestly, for-profit and non-profit hospitals behave about the same (sure, the bottom line profits aren't distributed to shareholders or whatever, but the still ensure they are maximizing revenue). Look up the largest healthcare systems in each state, most of them are probably "non-profit" and still bringing in 10+ billion in revenues each year.

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ChrisNYC70 t1_j3muct6 wrote

no more nurses to hire. the whole country has a nursing shortage. this has been the case for years and it’s getting worse when you look at the nurse per patient ratio.

what really sucks is that we have people who have immigrated from other countries. but since we refuse to allow their experience and certification to carry over these people are not eligible to work

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TheWhalersOnTheMoon t1_j3mvjzx wrote

I know the difference, though not sure why that matters in this context? I'm just saying that the behavior of the two entities do not differ much - you'll find that some of the most expensive hospitals in the country are in fact non-profit (mostly due to their size). And yeah, no one can disagree with the fact that healthcare is expensive as shit in America.

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Locem t1_j3mz7jv wrote

Well, I wish the nurses the best of luck, but this royally fucks me since I have a non-critical surgical procedure this week that's now likely going to get delayed. God damnit.

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Hrekires t1_j3na3t2 wrote

Which hospitals aren't affected?

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lkroa t1_j3njmk0 wrote

it’s not a shortage of nurses. it’s a shortage of nurses willing to work under these conditions (which have been rapidly worsening for years). many nurses are leaving the bedside for non bedside roles, retiring early, or moving to other careers entirely.

fix the working conditions and you won’t have a nursing shortage

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lkroa t1_j3nk1oe wrote

while all hospitals will technically be affected, the two striking hospitals are Mount Sinai (the main location) and Montefiore (Moses, Weiler, and Hutch campuses)

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mowotlarx t1_j3nkqwi wrote

>Not discrediting his hard work and determination it took to get there but what exactly are they striking for?

You literally discredited him in the second half of your sentence. What a bad faith argument. Hospital nurses break their fucking backs with limited staff and resources to care for people, and you trot out some lazy personal anecdote?

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mowotlarx t1_j3nl0dx wrote

Ethics? How ethical is it that the CEOs of the two health care systems in this strike are making millions of dollars in salary annually with bonuses. That's fucking unethical. These health systems have plenty of money to go around to increase worker pay for the people who do care work and hire more of them for safe staffing. They can. They choose not to because of pure top down greed.

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mowotlarx t1_j3nlaa5 wrote

They can. These hospital systems can both afford to increase pay, maintain benefits and hire more nurses. They choose not to because of pure unchecked corporate greed wherein their boards demand skyrocketing profits year after year. They don't care about quality of service at the top, they care about how many millions of dollars in bonuses they can give themselves while they thank their ICU unit with a pizza party.

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MarketMan123 t1_j3noulj wrote

Curious if anyone here works at CityMD and if they’re seeing an increased volume and wait time as a result of people not going to ERs.

(Yes, I know the two shouldn’t be interchangeable, but some folks treat them that way)

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ChrisNYC70 t1_j3nro87 wrote

Disagree. I work with a non profit that provides home care and health and wellness classes. Our nurse retired back in Feb. she loved her job with us. No bed pans. It was just meeting with clients and reviewing medications. Setting goals. 90% of the clients came to her and for home bound clients she had an Uber account for them. It was a 9-5 Monday through Friday job. Vacation, sick, health insurance, retirement plan. The works. Salary was in the low $90k.

We have always had a hard time finding nurses and it’s not the pay, location, type of job, co workers or hours. When you speak to any nursing school or temp agency they will tell you the people are not out there. Right now when we need nurses , the most over the last 10 years we have seen less and less people want to become nurses. Younger people are expected to be “more than nurses” all are pushed to go to school and get a business degree or if they have interest in medicine. It’s to be a doctor, dentist, vet even.

It’s not as simple as pay them more and they will come.

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sarahv7896 t1_j3nxhix wrote

No one should ever de-prioritize their health, however, I hope a secondary benefit to this strike is having people re-evaluate what emergencies are appropriate for the hospital vs Dr. office, urgent care, etc.

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ShatteredCitadel t1_j3o60zo wrote

You can disagree all you want. Why do you think people want to work as a doctor or dentist or vet over being a nurse? It sure as shit isn’t cause they like staring at teeth or putting their hand up a cows birthing canal. It’s money. Nurses earn considerably less than the three professions you listed. If the nurses earned $500K for the top on their field in specialist positions like doctors do (or even more for the real rockstars) then you bet your ass people would line up out the door for nurses.

A lack of good wages for a long time has kept interest in the role down. Now there’s both a wage and staff shortage. Even if they up the salaries to insane levels the staff problem won’t be solved.

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PBreg t1_j3o9mf7 wrote

Nobody wants to be a doctor anymore. PA schools and other "provider" pathways provide better schedules, almost the same amount of money, and they wear long white coats so patient's don't even know they're not doctors.

And that's not even mentioning the lack of respect that doctors get now, not just from the C suite executives, but also from a lot of patients as well. Just like nursing, it's just not worth becoming a doctor anymore.

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volkommm t1_j3ocp67 wrote

Most people are at the job they are at because their ACTUAL dream jobs are unattainable or unrealistic due to lack of opportunity, lack of willpower/intelligence, or other circumstances.

Not everyone can be an astronaut, but I bet you everyone on that mission planning team wishes they were.

There's a difference between people wanting a job for money and wanting a job because it's decent money and it's the best they can do.

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Deluxe78 t1_j3ojym4 wrote

Other then NY legislators just gave themselves the biggest raise in the nation?

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ScarcitySenior3791 t1_j3ole91 wrote

You said your BIL is on call. Cath lab? OR? PACU?

You need to understand that working conditions vary greatly from unit to unit. If you are a med surg nurse with 8 high acuity patients, you cannot provide good care. If you are an ER nurse with 2 dozen patients (or whatever bullshit ratio Mt. Sinai prides itself on because it purports to be so "hardcore"), you cannot provide good care. If you are an ICU nurse with 3 patients on vents, you cannot provide good care. Moreso if you have no ancillary support staff like CNAs.

Most of us will be hospitalized at some point in our lives. What's going on right now impacts all of us. Do you want to be in the hospital under the care of nurses who can't possibly keep up with their workload, who are burnt out from dealing with admin who don't give a shit?

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mtempissmith t1_j3qa0ie wrote

I've already had two appts rescheduled as tele-appointments. I expect that will continue until this is over and the Covid uptick has leveled out.

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lkroa t1_j3ttmp0 wrote

i mean to some extent, any hospital near one or the striking hospitals will be affected. bellevue is pretty far from monte and mount sinai, so they probably won’t feel anything. public hospital nurses can’t strike by law, so i think that’s more of what your mom meant, by public hospitals not being affected

however jacobi and north central bronx are right by montefiore and given montefiore is on diversion, they are likely seeing higher volume since ambulances aren’t going to montefiore.

lenox hill is opening their makeshift units from the height of covid to accommodate increased volume of patients from mount sinai’s strike. (i know lenox hill isn’t a public hospital)

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