The Federation of Nurses/UFT is in a pitched battle with NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn over short staffing that the union contends is putting patients at risk.

The state Department of Health is investigating about 150 complaints filed by nurses who are Federation of Nurses/UFT members documenting that the hospital in Sunset Park was in violation of the 2021 Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act.

Under state regulations issued in July as a result of that law, New York State implemented a universal staffing policy stating that nurses in critical care and intensive care units could take care of a maximum of two patients at a time. But nurses in these two units at NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn are sometimes responsible for three or four patients each, said Vice President Anne Goldman, the head of the Federation of Nurses/UFT.

“Patients at NYU’s Brooklyn hospital have suffered because the hospital’s leadership consistently violates the law that sets nurse-to-patient ratios necessary for safe and appropriate care,” said Goldman. “Giving nurses excessive patient loads deprives patients of the quality care the hospital is duty-bound to provide and leads to increases in patient falls, ‘bedsore’ complaints and nurse turnover.”

The union also charges that NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn has violated the contract by regularly understaffing medical-surgical units, the stroke unit, the rehabilitation unit, the emergency department and the mother-baby unit. Federation of Nurses/UFT members at the hospital have filed more than 2,000 short-staffing incident reports since January 2022.

Safe staffing ratios were first established in the 2016 collective bargaining agreement, and they were enhanced in the 2018 contract. The 2022 contract with NYU Langone created a panel of three arbitrators to hear staffing-shortage cases once a month, streamlining an often arduous process. In a groundbreaking arbitration agreement, the hospital paid a total of $137,500 to approximately 250 nurses who worked on the short-staffed shifts covered by union grievances filed in 2020 and 2021.

NYSUT and the AFT, the UFT’s state and national affiliates, have joined the fight to amplify the call for safe nurse-to-patient staffing levels.

“We want to deliver safe, effective care for our patients,” said Maria Paradiso, an NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn nurse in the post-anesthesia care unit. “We want to do everything we can to save a life.”

Paradiso, who is a chapter secretary and a chapter delegate, said she is proud to be part of the “incredible” team of Federation of Nurses/UFT members at NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn, who back one another up when they are able.

Being part of the union enables members to speak out on patients’ behalf. “It empowers them,” she said.