Two Big Apple hospitals struggled to cope with a debilitating nurses’ strike Tuesday that left some patients in dire need of more care and skeletal staff juggling overwhelming loads, workers and patients said.
“God, it’s not like they are saying it is — it’s worse,’’ said a travel nurse who is working at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan during the strike.
“We are dying up here,’’ she told The Post during a break outside the hospital Tuesday — where an estimated 1,000 striking nurses and their supporters were chanting and waving signs.
The seasoned medical worker, who has more than 10 years experience claimed that while she was working at the hospital Monday, a patient bleeding internally nearly died because of the scarcity of nurses in the ICU.
“The [patient-to-nurse] ratio in the surgical ICU was 4 to 1, and it should be 2 to 1,’’ she said. “It was by the grace of God that someone decided to stay to make it 3 to 1.”
A man who came in “almost bled to death and had to be rushed to the [operating room]. I heard he lost three liters of blood,” she said. “This would have been caught if the ratio was 2 to 1 as it is supposed to be.
“If I were a family member, I’d move my family to a hospital that’s not on strike because it’s difficult, and it’s not safe,’’ the nurse said.
“I am a confident nurse. I have a lot of experience in the ICU. But I’ve never felt like this before. We are literally doing all we can to keep them alive.”
More than 7,000 nurses who work at Mount Sinai’s main campus on the Upper East Side and at three locations of Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx have been out on strike at the private hospitals since 1 a.m. Monday. Other hospitals in the city have recently reached tentative pacts with their nurses, who are repped by the same union.
Leah Stern, 19 of New Rochelle was at Montefiore’s campus at 111 E. 210th St. on Tuesday for her daily platelet transfusion to treat a bleeding disorder and told The Post she had to wait nearly six hours, or triple the usual time, to get the procedure.
“I had to wait for hours,” said Stern, who had an eye swollen shut and a bandage wrapped around her head from a recent fall because of her medical condition.
“And I didn’t even finish all my transfusions,” she lamented. “I have to do it at home now.”
Javier Gonzalez, 34, was visiting his mother, who has meningitis, in the same hosp’s ICU on Tuesday.
“I was here with my mom when we got here on [Jan. 3], and there’s a big difference between now and the 3rd,” he told The Post. “What I’m noticing is they’re short on staff, and it’s taking them time to get to other people that are really sick in the ICU.
“Machines were going off in [my mother’s] room, and I had to call a nurse because the nurse was taking care of other people. A week ago, they would have been already there.
“Now there’s one nurse covering for every five that aren’t here. … They’re running back and forth, back and forth.”
A source with the union, the New York State Nurses Association, told The Post on Tuesday that while “we bargained with Montefiore into the night, and we are back in bargaining with Montefiore today … Mt. Sinai still has no bargaining sessions scheduled, unfortunately.”
For both hospitals, “the main sticking point continues to be enforcing safe staffing levels to ensure that there are always enough nurses at the bedside to safely care for our patients,’’ the source said.
A source at Mount Sinai declined to specifically address the travel nurse’s claims about the hospital’s ICU but said that since Sunday, the site has been forced to transfer “hundreds” of patients to its unaffected affiliates and also facilities outside its medical system.
“We are just hoping that we will see a solution to this. Because this is very stressful,” the source said of the strike — adding that hospital and union reps may be headed back to the negotiating table Tuesday afternoon.
“There’s a great impact here, there’s no other way of saying that,” the source acknowledged. “So we’re hopeful that conversations will continue.”
The source said the relocated patients aren’t from particular units because the hospital “is just looking at patients who can be safely transferred.”
The source added that the hospital is relying on contracted agency workers and non-union staff, including doctors and nurse practitioners, to help fill in for the striking nurses.
Mount Sinai’s president, David Reich, told staffers in a missive Tuesday, “We are accepting general adult and pediatric ambulance cases but diverting certain more complex cases like stroke to other hospitals.
“Patients in our Emergency Department who require admission and can be safely transferred are being moved to other hospitals, but those who cannot be safely transferred are admitted here. We are performing emergency surgery but postponing elective cases.”
Meanwhile, Montefiore said it has pitched new concessions in its latest round of negotiations, including sweetening nurses’ pay based on their experience.
A couple who went to see their daughter Tuesday on Mount Sinai’s 11th floor, in its oncology unit, told The Post that their child is receiving enough care where she is.
“I’m satisfied. I was concerned, but this is like a regular day for her,’’ said the dad, who didn’t want his name used.
“She has a nurse. She got all her medications,’’ he said. “There are other people walking the halls — aides — getting towels and stuff.”
But an emergency room nurse on strike at the hospital said the situation had only been going from bad to worse in some units, forcing the union action.
“ICU nurses are doubling their work, especially like fresh open-heart surgery,’’ she said of conditions before the strike. “You are only supposed to have one patient per nurse. These nurses have three patients.”
The travel nurse working at Mount Sinai during the strike added, “We were told they were going to hire strike nurses, but we haven’t seen any.
“We were told they were going to ship patients out, but they haven’t done that. We were told they were going to put a lot of surgeries on hold, but they haven’t done that.
“I told them I’m leaving if they don’t change the ratio because it’s not working,’’ she said. “I don’t want to lose a patient. I don’t want a patient to die.
“I need to remain anonymous so I don’t lose my job,’’ the nurse said. “I just want the public to know what is really going on and that the hospital really needs to meet an agreement with their nurses soon before something bad happens.”
Additional reporting by Carl Campanile
