Dear Friend,

New York City Nurses Hold Week of Action to Demand Hospitals Protect Healthcare

NYSNA nurses at New York City private sector hospitals held another strong week of action, and elected officials and community allies joined them. Nurses at Mount Sinai Morningside/West, The Brooklyn Hospital Center, Maimonides, Mount Sinai Hospital and Wyckoff Heights Medical Center spoke out and demanded hospitals do their part to protect healthcare! Legislators and allies joined nurses to show their support in this fight. Nurses demanded fair contracts that respect patients, nurses and our communities, and WBAI and Public News Service covered their actions. Below are updates for each of these hospitals.

The Brooklyn Hospital Center

NYSNA nurses at The Brooklyn Hospital Center gathered outside the hospital on Wednesday to speak with local elected officials about the state of their contract negotiations with management. State Senator Jabari Brisport and Assembly Member Phara Souffrant Forrest (represented by her chief of staff) listened as the nurses, many with 20 and 30 years at the hospital, expressed outrage at the hospital’s proposals to limit time off, provide less orientation for new staff, expand the use of floating, and significantly decrease tuition reimbursement. Both elected representatives assured the nurses that they would stand with them in their efforts to win a fair contract.

Mount Sinai Morningside-West 

On Wednesday, Nov. 12, nurses gathered at Mount Sinai West to speak out and demand Mount Sinai invest in safe patient care rather than risky artificial intelligence and high executive pay. Nurses spoke about safe staffing, workplace violence and protecting immigrant patients. Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, Council Member Erik Bottcher and Assembly Member Tony Simone joined them. Nurses hope this action will lead to more progress at the bargaining table, where management has still refused to put forth any proposals.

Maimonides Medical Center 

NYSNA nurses at Maimonides braved the wind and rain to speak out for safe patient care. President Nancy Hagans, RN, BSN, CCRN, kicked off the event, and elected officials and community allies — including Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso; New York City Central Labor Council Secretary Treasurer Janella Hinds; City Council Members Mercedes Narcisse, Crystal Hudson and Alexa Aviles; City Council Member-Elect Kayla Santosuosso, Assembly Member Rodneyse Bichotte and the Rev. Kirsten Foy of Arc of Justice — joined the nurses. They all talked about the importance of safety net hospitals for the Brooklyn community and demanded that Maimonides stop trying to roll back safe staffing and nurse benefits during bargaining.  

Mount Sinai Hospital 

On Thursday, Nov. 13, nurses gathered at Mount Sinai Hospital, braving the rain and hail, to speak out about the need to protect access to care for ALL New Yorkers, especially trans and immigrant patients. Nurses spoke out about the way management has retaliated against vocal patient advocates, attempting to undermine nurse power. Nurses were joined by Senator Jose Serrano, Council Members Julie Menin and Assembly Member Micah Lasher and Claire Valdez. Additionally, Mark Hannay, Director of Metro New York Healthcare, and a patient’s husband spoke in support of nurses.

Wyckoff Heights Medical Center

To close out the week of action, nurses spoke out at Wyckoff Medical Center. City Council Members Sandy Nurse, Justin Brannan and Julia Salazar and community allies, including The Black Institute and Churches United for Fair Housing, joined them. Nurses spoke out about safe staffing and the impact understaffing has on patients and nurses and in pediatrics and other units. Nurses will keep fighting until they get the contract nurses and their community deserves.

Next Up: RSVP for the Rally at City Hall

Join New York City private sector nurses next week for a rally at City hall to kick off an important City Council oversight hearing on the state of nursing in New York City. Nurses will address the City Council and demand that it hold hospitals accountable and protect healthcare for New Yorkers. Nurses will discuss how retaliation, workplace violence and understaffing make their fight for fair contracts inextricable with safe patient care. Join your union siblings and RSVP here!

Happy Nurse Practitioner Week! NPs: Trusted Voices, Proven Care

Happy Nurse Practitioner Week to all our incredible nurse practitioner members! This year’s theme is “NPs: Trusted Voices, Proven Care.” There are over 461,000 licensed NPs across the country who are shaping the future of healthcare every day. Thank you for your fierce patient advocacy, excellent advanced practice, and leadership in expanding and redefining what is possible in nursing practice!

We Care for the North Country: NYSNA Members Launch Ad Campaign

NYSNA members at seven facilities in the North Country are bargaining for new contracts and fighting to ensure that all North Country residents have access to the safe, quality patient care they deserve. Members at Samaritan Medical Center, Carthage Area Hospital, Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center, University of Vermont (UVM)-Elizabethtown Community Hospital and UVM-Alice Hyde are already at the table. Nurses at Adirondack Medical Center and UVM-Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital are set to begin bargaining as soon as next week.

Across the North Country, members have already engaged in sticker actions, petition deliveries, and marches on the boss to let hospital leadership know that they're serious about this fight and won't back down until they settle the contract nurses and patients deserve. At Samaritan, nurses continue to make good progress at the table and are pushing back against management for refusing to include language around artificial intelligence and new technologies in their contract. Nurses, however, are the true experts in patient care, and a computer—no matter how advanced—can never take the place of a real nurse at the bedside.

Additionally, this week, members launched a coordinated ad campaign to protect patient care and healthcare services in the North Country, with a new billboard in Watertown. Billboards are launching next week near UVM-Alice Hyde, Carthage-Hepburn Medical Center and CVPH. Members hope that the campaign will build awareness of the role they play in keeping North Country residents safe and healthy, especially as federal cuts to healthcare funding are set to take place at the beginning of the year. Stay tuned—both for more updates from the North Country and as more billboards are set to launch in the coming weeks!

NYSNA Nurses at ECMC Continue Fight to Secure Paid Family Leave

This spring, NYSNA nurses at Erie County Medical Center successfully advocated for access to New York's groundbreaking Paid Family Leave Program, which serves as a critical resource for workers in New York, offering job protection and paid time off after the birth of a child, when a member of their household is sick, or if a family member is overseas on deployment. After convincing management to offer the program, nurses organized their colleagues, educating them on the benefits of the program; in the end, members voted overwhelmingly to opt in to Paid Family Leave.

Nearly six months after the vote, ECMC still has no concrete plan to implement the program, citing costs and the need to also offer short-term disability insurance. In response, members at ECMC launched an email campaign this week, targeting ECMC leadership and asking them to make good on offering this life-changing program. In just a few days, nearly 300 members have participated in the action—and ECMC nurses have no plan to stop until they have access to Paid Family Leave. Keep up the great work, ECMC nurses, and don't stop fighting until hospital leadership honors their commitment!

St. Joseph’s Kicks Off Bargaining

On the first day of negotiations at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Yonkers, NYSNA nurses presented a comprehensive proposal aimed at improving staffing levels and raising standards for both nurses and patients. Our union priorities focus on ensuring safe nurse-to-patient ratios, fair working conditions, and enhanced ability to recruit and retain nurses. Meanwhile, the hospital presented proposals detrimental to nurses and patient safety, attempting to weaken ratios and eliminate break time. Nurses are stickering up and escalating the campaign for the fair contract that patients and nurses deserve!

Strength in Solidarity: 2025 NYSNA Convention Recap

In late October, hundreds of NYSNA members from across the state gathered in Monticello for our 2025 NYSNA Convention! This year’s was the largest in NYSNA history, with over 1,000 delegates, member observers and guests in attendance. Over the course of our two-day convention, NYSNA members furthered our nursing practice and advocacy skills by attending workshops, helped to determine our union’s direction by participating in the voting body, and connected with our union siblings from across New York. We also listened to two keynote presentations—the first on the impacts of cuts to healthcare funding and the second from New York State AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento and National Nurses United (NNU) Officer and Veterans Affairs Nurse Ketsia Saint-Fort on meeting the moment as healthcare workers and members of the labor movement.

Check out the full convention recap here, including the list of approved resolutions and photos from both days!

NYC H+H/Mayorals Nurses Are Ready 

At the monthly NYC Health+Hospitals/Mayorals Executive Committee meeting, nurses were excited about the recent mayoral election results, donning their “Nurses for Zohran” T-shirts. NYSNA nurses are prepared to advocate to make our incoming mayor’s vision of a thriving, healthy and affordable city for all New Yorkers a reality!

Fall 2025 Labor Ed Trainings Open for Registration

NYSNA’s Labor Education Department trains members on how to become engaged union members and union leaders. Sign up for Labor Education’s standard trainings that include learning about NYSNA and organized labor, how to turn out your co-workers to meetings and events, how to win issues in your unit, how to take control of meetings with management and more. Check out Labor Education’s updated fall schedule here – only three more remain before the end of the year!

Additionally, bargaining trainings on how to become an effective Contract Action Team member, mobilizing members for the contract fight and rounding are available and can be tailored to your facility. Email [email protected] directly if you have questions or to schedule a workshop in your facility.

Your Rights to Advocate for Patients When Encountering ICE

Nurses’ first duty is to care for and advocate for our patients. NYSNA nurses care for all New Yorkers regardless of immigration status, income or insurance status, race, religion, ability or disability, sexuality, or gender identity or expression — simply regardless. Read our statement regarding the federal policy change on immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations,” including hospitals and schools.

Our allies at the New York Immigration Coalition developed this toolkit to provide a comprehensive list of resources for community members, partners and allies who work with immigrants. The toolkit covers health, community safety, family resources, financial empowerment and more.

Learn your rights and get answers to frequently asked questions here to know what to do if you encounter ICE officers in your facility.

NYSNA has also prepared this list of legal resources related to immigration. Please review and share widely.

NNU RNRN Stand By: Hurricane Melissa Response

RNRN is preparing for a potential deployment to assist victims in the wake of Hurricane Melissa.

Since barreling through the Caribbean as one of the strongest storms to ever affect the region, Melissa left catastrophic damage across western Jamaica as well as parts of Cuba and Haiti. Search and rescue operations are still ongoing, and communication is just now being restored to many areas, with ground access also still very difficult. It is expected that the clean-up and recovery from the storm will be long and arduous. Priorities at this time are the provision of food, water, medical supplies, and generators to the affected regions.

RNRN partner International Medical Corps is currently on the ground in Jamaica working with local officials to determine if and where a medical team deployment might be needed to assist the victims both for immediate needs as well as for the longer-term recovery phase.

If you are interested in being considered for a potential deployment, go to this link to apply.

Sign Up for New NNU Courses Free for NYSNA Members

NNU is offering FREE virtual courses for NYSNA members. New fall 2025/winter 2026 courses have been added. View the full calendar and register here, or click on the links below to learn more and register for the courses you’re interested in. When registering for NNU courses, be sure to check the first box, “Yes, I am a CNA/NNOC/NNU member.”

Fall/winter offerings:

• “Social Justice and Patient Advocacy (2 hours)”

• “Planet Over Profits: The Health Impacts of Environmental Crisis & What Nurses Can Do”

• “Partnering With Our Patients: Nurses, Worker Power, and Health Justice (2 hours)”

• “How Financialization Is Reshaping the Hospital Industry: What Nurses Need to Know”

• “The Biology of Inequality: The Health Impacts of Social Environments”

• “Investigating Long Covid and Its Impacts on Patient and Nurse Health”

• “Our Patients Are Safe When We Are Safe: Workplace Violence and Back Injury Prevention in Health Care Facilities”

Reporting Child Abuse Course Addendum Is Live on E-LeaRN

NYSNA’s Nursing Education and Practice (NEP) is happy to announce that NYSNA’S NYS Child Abuse: Identification and Reporting, 8th Edition — Addendum online course is now live on our E-LeaRN platform.

Anyone who completed the NYSNA course, NYS Child Abuse: Identification and Reporting, 8th Edition, through the NYSNA E-LeaRN platform between Oct. 1, 2023, and Sept. 30, 2025, is eligible to complete the addendum course with us. The addendum course is free for NYSNA members. If you are eligible, you may access the addendum course by logging onto E-LeaRN by clicking “Browse Catalog” and searching for “addendum.”

Every person who is required to take the mandated training related to child abuse must take either the full three-hour course or the one-hour addendum portion of the training by Nov. 17, 2026.

Check out the NYSNA website for the latest updates to this requirement. If you have any questions about your E-LeaRN account, please contact NEP at [email protected].

NEW: Call for Submissions! The Journal of the New York State Nurses Association

The Journal of the New York Nurses Association is calling for submissions. Authors are invited to submit scholarly papers, research studies, brief reports on clinical or educational innovations, and articles of opinion on subjects important to registered nurses. Of particular interest are papers addressing direct care issues. New authors and student authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts for publication. Read the latest flyer outlining submission categories here. Read the guidelines for submission here.

The latest volume of The Journal of the New York Nurses Association is out now! You can read it here.

Med-Ed Continuing Education Discount

NYSNA has partnered with Med-Ed Continuing Nursing Education to provide NYSNA members with full access to the complete Med-Ed catalogue at a 50% reduced rate. These are all self-study programs that members can access and complete at their leisure. You can access these course offerings by going to NYSNA’s members-only website here, then clicking on the Med-Ed website link, and entering the Promo Code NYSNAMEMBER at checkout, where the discount will apply.

Please do not share this information with any nonmembers.

2025 Nurse Education and Practice Workshops

NYSNA members can take advantage of FREE E-LeaRN courses, including state-mandated offerings, standard of practice and certification review courses, as well as nursing practice workshops. Take a look at the complete course offering, and register for the courses directly here. You must create an account and be signed in to search the full catalog of classes and register for them at no cost!

Based on our members’ demands, NEP has also added the following workshop to our calendar in response to the learning needs assessment survey:

• “Nursing Team Concepts — Communication, Delegation and Supervision,” Dec. 2

Seminar at Sea 2026

Last year, NYSNA nurses sailed to Spain and Portugal while learning about resilience, emotional intelligence and how they connect to nursing. Next year, join NYSNA on an unforgettable weeklong cruise to China, South Korea and Japan set to sail in April 2026! This is an opportunity to visit beautiful countries while obtaining nursing continuing education credits and learning about the relevant and important topic of artificial intelligence in nursing practice and nursing education. Check out the informational flyer to learn about this unique and informative educational program.  

Calling All Nurse Practitioners

The NYSNA Nursing Education and Practice Department has added required and important educational offerings specifically for nurse practitioners (NPs). The courses include new, updated and mandated courses. Learn more and register for these classes for NYSNA NPs.

Nurses’ Rights to Be Whistleblowers and Protest Your Assignments

NYSNA members should be empowered with the knowledge of laws that have been passed with NYSNA’s input to protect them and empower them to speak up when patient safety is compromised, either due to unsafe staffing or other factors, such as a lack of personal protective equipment, as was the case throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Take a moment to learn about your rights in this flyer.

Factsheet: Preparing for Wildfire Smoke

Smoke from wildfires has become a common feature in New York state and the surrounding area. Wildfire smoke is far more dangerous to human health than regular pollution and presents complex problems for medical facilities. Check out the latest NYSNA Factsheet from NYSNA’s Occupational Health and Safety team to learn more about how healthcare facilities can prepare for wildfire smoke conditions to keep their patients and staff safe.

Long COVID Guide

Read NYSNA’s Long COVID Guide to help you stay informed on the diagnosis, treatment options, benefits and rights for workers with long COVID.

NYSNA Life Insurance — It’s Time to Designate Your Beneficiary!

NYSNA already provides members with a great benefit at no cost: Basic MetLife Life Insurance! This coverage provides $20,000 of Basic Life Insurance and $20,000 of Basic Personal Accidental Death and Dismemberment (AD&D) Insurance. All active members in good standing represented for collective bargaining through the union will automatically be enrolled in the plan. This union benefit is in addition to any other insurance provided by your benefits fund, your contract or through your employer.

But for your loved ones to receive this benefit, you must designate them as a beneficiary! To enroll and receive instructions on designating a beneficiary for your new Basic Personal AD&D Insurance, go to nysnawinstonbenefits.com or call 1-866-483-1124.

Sign up with your NYSNA Member ID to set up and access your account and benefits. If you need your Member ID, please contact the NYSNA Membership department at [email protected]. Download the flyer for additional details.

NYSNA Will-Writing Benefits From MetLife

The NYSNA Benefits Fund gives NYSNA members who are covered by the NYSNA Benefits Fund access to personal will preparation services that MetLife Legal Plans offer — at no additional cost.

Having a will prevents unnecessary stress and ensures final wishes are clear. The Benefits Fund offers valuable legal resources through MetLife Legal Plans to assist with creating or updating a will with a member’s Basic Life coverage. As part of this benefit, members get legal guidance and unlimited consultations with network attorneys. Learn more here.

NYSNA Members Are Eligible for AFL-CIO’s Union Plus Benefits!

The benefits of being a NYSNA member extend beyond your NYSNA benefits. As an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, NYSNA members are also eligible for Union Plus benefits to help current and retired labor union members and their families save money and support them through major milestones, celebrations and hardships. These benefits include discounts on wireless plans, credit card deals, mortgage deals, insurance plans and more! Find out more on the AFL-CIO Union Plus website.

The Talkspace Go App Is Mental Health on the Go!

The Talkspace Go app is a great resource that provides daily mental health support on the go! Talkspace Go is a clinician-created, self-guided app so you can address mental health challenges and build mental fitness on your own schedule. It empowers couples, individuals and parents to take progress into their own hands in as little as five minutes a day. Access 400-plus self-guided classes and live weekly therapist-led, anonymous classes. Enjoy assessments, meditation exercises, journaling, reminders and more.

Talkspace Go app is available at no cost to members and their eligible household members! Click here for the instructions and passcode to access the app.

Free Benefits for NYSNA Members: Union Assistance Program and SPAN

The Union Assistance Program (UAP) is a confidential self-help program, independent from NYSNA, that is available to NYSNA members and their families as a membership benefit. When an employee or family member (18 or older) faces a significant personal problem, they can call UAP’s experienced counselors at 800-252-4555 for assistance at any time. Read more information on phone counseling services here.

Learn about the benefits and resources that the UAP offers here. Check out the November 2025 newsletter here on the power of gratitude.

Statewide Peer Assistance for Nurses (SPAN) is a confidential education, support and advocacy program for all nurses licensed in New York state who are dealing with substance use issues. Visit the SPAN website for more information or to sign up for one of its upcoming classes. Check out SPAN’s new Compassion Project.

Wellness Wednesdays: As part of its mission to promote a healthy lifestyle, SPAN is also offering a Self-Care Series that includes free Wellness Wednesday courses. Check out the full calendar of Wellness Wednesday offerings here.

In solidarity,
Pat Kane, RN
Executive Director, NYSNA