NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Negotiations to keep about 10,000 New York City nurses from walking off the job headed into a final weekend as some major hospitals were already preparing Friday for a potential strike by sending ambulances elsewhere and transferring some patients, including vulnerable newborns.
\nThe walkout could start early Monday at several private hospitals, including two of the city\u2019s biggest: Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, each of which has more than 1,000 beds.
\nThey and a handful of other hospitals are bargaining with nurses who want raises and an end to what they say are untenable staffing squeezes, nearly three years into the coronavirus pandemic.
\n\u201cNew York City hospitals have violated our trust through years of understaffing, and that understaffing has only gotten worse since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic,\u201d nurses\u2019 union President Nancy Hagans said at a news briefing Friday. \u201cIt\u2019s time they come to the table and deliver the safe staffing standards that nurses and our patients deserve.\u201d
\nMount Sinai\u2019s chief nursing officer, Fran Cartwright, acknowledged nurses are stretched thin. But she pointed to the pandemic\u2019s disruptive sweep through people\u2019s working lives, at bedsides and beyond.<\/p>\n