CITY COLLEGE–“Unsafe staffing puts patients at risk. It could be a matter of life and death,” said Robin Krinsky, a DNP nurse working for over 25 years at Mount Sinai hospital in East Harlem. Krinsky works in the cardiac department, and sometimes she takes care of multiple patients a day due to the short staffing at the hospital.
Krinsky said that Mount Sinai nurses have warned of dire conditions to management since 2018. Still, shortages accelerate each year, “Even before the pandemic, the hospital was not able to meet the nurse-to-patient ratio on a consistent basis across all units,” said Krinsky. According to a 2020 report by the New York State Health Department, there will be a shortage of over 39,000 registered nurses in the state by 2030.
