Testimony of Anne Goldman, vice president for non-DOE and private sector members at the Federation of Nurses/UFT, submitted before the City Council Committee on Hospitals 

My name is Anne Goldman, and I am the vice president for non-DOE members at the United Federation of Teachers and the head of the Federation of Nurses/UFT. On behalf of the union’s more than 200,000 members, I want to thank Chair Mercedes Narcisse and the Committee on Hospitals for holding today’s hearing on the state of nursing in New York City. 

Today I want to talk about three topics that inform the state of nursing in this city: safe staffing, recruitment and retention. All three are critically important to maintaining a strong health care workforce that provides the highest quality of patient care. 

The Federation of Nurses/UFT has been at the forefront of the fight to enforce safe staffing because safe staffing is the key to delivering comprehensive patient care. We have always bargained for nurse-to-patient ratios that enable our nurses to provide each patient with adequate attention. If hospitals do not comply with these ratios, it puts both nurses and patients at risk. Nurses suffer the moral injury of not being able to provide optimum care to their patients, and patients are in danger of not receiving the care they need.  

For these reasons, we pushed state lawmakers to pass legislation giving the New York Department of Health the authority to enforce safe staffing ratios. We also created a process to file short-staffing grievances so that they would be addressed in a timely fashion. When the employer, NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn, failed to address the staffing shortages, we went to arbitration and won. The hospital was forced to provide additional pay to all the nurses who had worked short-staffed shifts. Thanks to our most recent contract with NYU Langone, the employer is paying about $1 million to roughly 700 nurses who filed grievances. Within that contract, there is also a new expedited arbitration process to make sure nurses who had to work short-staffed shifts are compensated more quickly. We accomplished this because we were data-driven and efficient and launched this campaign in a way that the employer could not ignore. 

The expedited process we created to address short-staffing grievances strengthens our ability to recruit and retain nurses, as it makes our hospitals more appealing workplaces. To further bolster our workforce and strengthen recruitment efforts, we must acknowledge the need for appropriate orientation and clinical support for our newest nurses, many of whom graduated during the pandemic. During the COVID crisis, the main goal was to keep everyone alive and breathing. Employers fast-tracked nurses, without the proper orientation and clinical expertise around them, to get as many workers as possible out on the hospital floors. Now, in the post-COVID era, we have returned to being able to treat the whole person in front of us, and we need veteran nurses to mentor and guide our newest hires.  

Further, all nurses, including senior nurses, want to receive continuing education throughout their careers. As new trends and technologies emerge in the health care field, we want to stay up to date. To ask a nurse to operate a new machine without any preparation is like asking a chef to cook in a kitchen without any knowledge of the ingredients or tools. They may be a five-star Michelin chef, but if they can’t use the correct equipment, they will not succeed. The very same thing is true when it comes to health care. If nurses do not understand the latest technology, patients will not receive effective care. 

Addressing the previous two topics, short staffing and continuing education, will lead to increased retention. When nurses feel that they are working in an environment with the correct staffing ratios and are given opportunities for professional learning, they are more likely to stay in the profession. Also, giving nurses voice and agency is another crucial way to increase retention. The union provides an avenue for nurses to voice any concerns about their workplace and to provide input on working conditions. A concern that is often brought to our union is about the safety of nurses. One of the wonderful things about our hospitals is that people know they can come to us when they are in trouble, but that also means we can be caught in the crossfire. It is imperative that we protect the staff, patients and families that are in our facilities. We must constantly review safety procedures with the hospital security guards and our employer to ensure they know what visitors are in the building and are monitoring our emergency rooms. Nurses will do whatever they can to protect their patients, but we also need protection.  

In conclusion, we are proud to be nurses and to care for any and every patient that walks into our exam rooms. In return we ask for appropriate staffing ratios, ongoing mentorship and education, and safety. I firmly believe that addressing these topics will improve the recruitment and retention of nurses in New York City. I am honored to be in front of you today, and I thank you for your time.