I am one of the nearly 15,000 New York City nurses who went on the largest and longest nurse strike in New York City history. I work at Mount Sinai Morningside hospital in a surgical step-down unit and a medical surgical unit that sees a mix of patients with different needs. It can be a challenge to safely staff a mixed unit like this when patients need different levels of care. Hospital understaffing was the main reason I got involved in my union, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), several years ago.

I came to Mount Sinai Morningside in 2018, but I was a nurse long before then; first in the Philippines and then in Florida, where you can’t even say the word “union” or talk to your coworkers about forming a union without getting reprimanded. When Morningside nurses negotiated a contract in 2022, I gave my colleagues support by attending the open bargaining sessions on Zoom.

In that last contract, we won improved and enforceable safe-staffing standards. Nurses finally had the tools to hold our hospital accountable when they overloaded nurses with too many patients at a time, putting our patient’s safety at risk.