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Image: NYS Nurses Association

At Noon on Friday, in front of City Hall, nurses, doctors, EMTs, and other healthcare professionals will go to the mayor to demand more coordinated action to rebuild our city’s healthcare infrastructure and care for the thousands of people hurting after Hurricane Sandy.  

Will you be there? And can you help get other nurses there?

Volunteers in the field urgently need supplies and greater help from the federal and city government. These life-saving volunteers have told us themselves that they can’t fill the place of a real community health network, and are asking us to help get clinics, pharmacies and hospitals re-opened.

On Friday, we’re taking a list of those medical needs to Mayor Bloomberg to ask for the City’s help.  

New York’s healthcare crisis is still unfolding – and likely to get worse. The response from city, state, and federal officials has been too little and too late. Urgent action and greater coordination are needed to help thousands of people in desperate need.

The storm badly damaged NYC’s healthcare system, and there is currently no Level One Trauma Center below 57th St. in Manhattan. The evacuation of Bellevue, NYU Langone, and Coney Island Hospitals has left some of our city’s most vulnerable patients forced to look elsewhere for care. Our city is short more than 2,000 hospital beds. We need our city and state officials to do everything in their power to re-open the hospitals as soon as possible.

Other hospitals are slammed with additional patients, and nurses on some units are working without proper staffing or training. All hospitals need to provide adequate staffing and training to deal with the influx of patients. And our city and state officials need to make a real plan to deal with the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital in 2010.

Thousands of New Yorkers – in Staten Island, the Rockaways, Coney Island, and beyond – are still stuck in their homes with no heat, no electricity, and urgent (and unattended) medical needs. Many of these people will get worse the longer they go unattended. Children and seniors are especially in need. Access to medication and medical devices is severely limited.

We are asking the Mayor to work with us to get medical care and medications out to the most devastated neighborhoods in the Rockaways, Coney Island and Staten Island, and to re-open services at Bellevue and Coney Island Hospitals on a clear and realistic timeline.

NYSNA is helping to coordinate this action with other frontline relief workers, including Physicians for a National Health Program, Occupy Sandy, the People’s Medical Relief, and many independent relief volunteers.

This group met with representatives from FEMA on Wednesday night. FEMA told us they would like to help get more resources into the field - but they can't do it without a formal request from the Mayor’s office.

It is late notice but we would like to make a real push to get nurses and our staff to this action. Please do your part today to tell nurses and ask them to come.

Dan Lutz and Desma Holcomb from our staff will be coordinating this action. If you have any questions, call Dan at 347.835.3429. 

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The New York State Nurses Association is the voice for nursing in the Empire State. With more than 37,000 members, it is New York’s largest professional association and union for registered nurses. The association represents registered nurses, and some all-professional bargaining units, in New York and New Jersey. It supports nurses and nursing practice through education, research, legislative advocacy, and collective bargaining.