By Randall Waszynski & Tim Oakes
A majority of nurses, at two Catholic Health Services hospitals in Suffolk County, who are working under expired contracts, have voted to authorize strikes, according to the New York State Nurses Association’s 2016 Voting Body Action Report.
Registered nurses at both St. Catherine of Siena of Smithtown and St. Charles of Port Jefferson are both seeking higher wages, increased staffing to improve patient care and healthcare benefits.. The recent voting to authorize striking is a step forward for the nurses who are looking to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement with hospital management. However, the nurses have yet to go on strike and cannot do so without alerting administration ten days in advance.
“I hope that we’re going to have a deal that I can announce this week,” Carl Ginsburg, the association’s communications director, said. “I anticipate an announcement to be made on Friday.”
The average salary of a registered nurse in New York State is $78,950. St. Catherine’s of Siena declined to specify on their hospital’s average salary but do say it is a “competitive rate.” However, the undisclosed “competitive rate” is a major negotiation point that has staff threatening to strike. St. Charles was unable to be reached to obtain its average salary for registered nurses.
Expressing concern with understaffing at the hospitals, Spencer Rumsey, a Democratic candidate for the 12th District of the New York State Assembly, said that geriatric patients with dementia may be the ones who suffer the most from the strike.
“[They] can’t really speak for their own needs,” Rumsey said. “You need the nurses there to be almost saintlike with their ability to care for these patients who can’t even express their own needs.”
Nurses employed at St. Catherine’s emergency department feel as if there staff is thin enough that it truly puts a burden on the staff whenever a nurse calls out sick. They simply do not have a large enough roster to pull from to fill the void should circumstances demand it.
When nurses work in a consistently understaffed workplace, they will be subject to fatigue, and, thus, quality of work will depreciate, Paula Doyle, Nurse Manager at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, said.
“If you added up the costs of the increase in errors that are absolutely inevitable with poor staffing … then you can get a dollar amount that can affect the hospital, bottom line, in a very negative way,” Doyle said. “If they took the preventative approach, and put the staffing together upfront, and created a safe environment where nurses really felt like they were giving excellent patient care, you’re going to reduce your errors, and you’re going to reduce turnover and save a lot of money.”
The Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act, passed by the New York State Assembly 108-32 in June 2016, is designed to ensure staffing levels can provide quality patient care and address the unique characteristics of patients at all times. Though it has yet to reach the Senate floor, it is expected to be introduced in Spring 2017 and provide a more permanent solution to the issue of understaffing of nurses in state hospitals.
Randall Waszynski 