Why Thousands of Nurses Are Striking in NYC—and What It Could Mean for Patients

Almost 15,000 nurses at several major New York hospitals are on strike, raising concerns about how staffing shortages could affect the city’s health care system. The strike, which began on Monday morning, came as contract negotiations stalled after months of bargaining, according to the nurses’ union, New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA). It is impacting some of the city’s top medical centers: Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside and West, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, and Montefiore Medical Center. Here’s what to know about the situation. Why are nurses on strike? The strikers’ specific demands vary between the several institutions the nurses walked out of, but the nurses’ union broadly said that its members were demanding improvements to staffing levels, health benefits, and protections against workplace violence. “Hospital management refuses to address our most important issues—patient and nurse safety,” NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said in a press release. “It is shameful that the city’s richest hospitals refuse to continue healthcare benefits for frontline nurses, refuse to staff safely for our patients, and refuse to protect us from workplace violence.” “Nurses do not want to strike,” Hagans continued, “but our bosses have forced us out on strike.” Hospital officials, though, have called some of the union’s requests too expensive and defended nurses’ salaries; a spokesperson for Mount Sinai told The New York Times that nurses there make an average of $162,000 a year, and that NYSNA’s asks would raise that amount to $275,000 over three years. “The health care system is under siege financially,” Kenneth E. Raske, the president of the trade group Greater New York Hospital Association, told the Times. “The demands of the union are so outrageous that there is no way they can concede to what the union is asking for.” What could the strike mean for patients? On Friday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order in anticipation of the strike, declaring a “disaster emergency” in multiple counties in and around the city due to predicted “severe staffing shortages” that she said “are expected to impact the availability and delivery of care, threatening public health and safety.”  The order noted that the strain on hospitals could be exacerbated because of the surge in flu cases in recent weeks. The New York City Health Department reported on Thursday that more than 128,000 cases of the flu had so far been recorded in the city since the flu season began, amid a wider spike in both cases and hospitalizations driven by a new variant of influenza A called “subclade K.” The department noted that the city had seen a two-week decline in new cases following a record-setting week in December, but cautioned New Yorkers that “flu season is far from over.” The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave its own warning about ongoing risks on Friday, saying that “elevated influenza activity is expected to continue for several more weeks.” The hospitals affected by the strike are still open, and have hired travel nurses to temporarily cover for workers who are on strike, The Associated Press reported. But the strike could mean that impacted medical institutions may have to transfer patients to other hospitals and cancel or reschedule surgeries because of insufficient staffing levels.