UFT Vice President Anne Goldman opened the Federation of Nurses/UFT’s Professional Issues Conference with a reminder of why nurses need a strong collective voice. “The employer is running a business,” said Goldman, who leads the Federation of Nurses/UFT. “You are here to advocate for patient care and the opportunity to do nursing in the most excellent way.”

Some 300 federation members convened on Nov. 21 at the Westin New York Grand Central Hotel for the annual conference, which featured workshops, a keynote address on neurology and a festive luncheon.

Throughout the day, union leaders, nurses and guest speakers underscored how high-quality patient care often conflicts with a hospital’s profit motive. Goldman said hospital management and nurses don’t share the same goals. “That’s why we need a strong union voice,” she said.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew thanked the nurses for using their collective voice and bargaining power to advocate for both their patients and their colleagues. Members of the union’s NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn Chapter have filed thousands of grievances to force the hospital to comply with the union contract and a 2021 state law that established safe staff-patient ratios.

As a result of a groundbreaking arbitration settlement in 2023, the hospital must now compensate nurses who work understaffed shifts. “Because what good are ratios if they’re not real?” asked Goldman.

Mulgrew described the current health care landscape as “being infiltrated by private equity” and noted the outsize bonuses that health care executives receive while trying to keep labor costs low.

“It has gotten bad,” he warned, “and their strategy is to divide and conquer the workers. It’s only unions that can stand up to their power.”

DaiWai Olson, a nurse and professor at University of Texas Southwestern, delivered a rollicking keynote address — “Understanding Confusion Does Not Have to Be So Confusing” — on the history, evaluation and treatment of confusion, delirium and dementia. Olson stressed the importance of nurse expertise when assessing patients who present in a confused state. “Nursing judgment and evaluation of altered states of consciousness has equal or near-equal value to established assessment tools,” he said.

During the daylong conference, members attended two of four 90-minute continuing education workshops on artificial intelligence in health care, how to apply for workers’ comp, the value of cultivating mentors and how to navigate medical emergencies.

Olivia Forbes, a registered nurse at VNS on Long Island, said that as a new nurse, she especially valued the workshop on establishing a mentorship program. Forbes graduated during the COVID-19 pandemic and “didn’t have much mentorship — I was kind of thrown in,” she said. “Mentoring would improve patient outcomes.”

Stacy Crum-Ewing, a recovery room nurse at NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn, said the workshop on artificial intelligence helped her understand how AI tools in her workplace could make nurses’ workflow more efficient. “But at the same time,” she said, “nurses need to be involved in the decision-making about what tools are implemented.”

Mark-Anthony Williams, another nurse at NYU Langone–Brooklyn, said he appreciated that the AI workshop centered the union’s role in protecting its members. “It’s good to know how much work the UFT has put in behind the scenes to educate us and fight for us,” he said.