Listen to Your Nurses: We Need Relief on the Front Lines
I have worked as a pediatric ICU nurse at Westchester Medical Center for more than seven years. Patients from a five-county region come to our hospital, including our children’s hospital and level I trauma center. We provide intensive and specialty care to some of the most vulnerable patient populations. Understaffing is a long-standing issue in nursing that has only been exacerbated since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. With understaffed [...]
‘Nurses Have Finally Learned What They’re Worth’
In the early morning on Mother’s Day in 2020, Solomon Barraza walked into an intensive-care unit in Amarillo, Texas, and, with the fluorescent lights clicking on above him after the night shift, flipped through the stack of papers attached to a gray clipboard — his roster of patients and nurses for the day. Barraza, who was 30 at the time, had only recently become a charge nurse at Northwest Texas [...]
The Votes Are In: Milford Nurses Vote to Unionize
Nurses at Milford Regional Medical Center have unionized. “We are overjoyed. We are so happy and so proud,” said Karen Kerr, a nurse on one of the hospital’s COVID-19 floors. “We’re looking forward to all working together now.” The National Labor Relations Board tallied the votes Monday, and a representative from the Massachusetts Nurses Association released the final count as nurses from the hospital celebrated on Zoom. The vote was 256 [...]