As a nurse and a member of the Federation of Nurses/UFT, I appreciate the UFT’s strong support of our efforts to improve patient care even as hospitals become more corporate and more focused on dollars and cents.
The new UFT-NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn contract strengthens that advocacy by reducing the staffing ratio on medical-surgical units to five patients for every one nurse, a ratio that ensures I will have more time to spend with each patient to care for them, to educate them about their medications and possible side effects, and to answer their questions. The lower ratio also ensures patient safety because it gives me more time for the required documentation of care and medication, especially of patients on multiple medications.
A lower patient/staff ratio was one of the items I chose as a top priority in the contract survey of our entire staff that the union conducted prior to negotiations.
As chapter leader of the UFT’s NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn chapter, I can boast that as the only unionized staff in the NYU Langone chain, we’re the only one with such a professionally sound patient/nurse ratio, and we also have the best pension and benefit package of all the other hospitals in the chain.
I was a paramedic for 18 years before becoming a hospital nurse 10 years ago so I know the territory very well. I know how important our annual UFT-sponsored Professional Issues Conference is in keeping me abreast of new trends, legal responsibilities and what to do to evacuate patients in an emergency.
And, as the corporate climate in health care grows, I know how important union solidarity is in giving nurses a voice to protect and improve our working conditions and to advocate for our patients.
Bob Cain is a registered nurse and UFT member at NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn.
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