Montefiore Hutch Nurses Fight for Pediatric Patient Safety

(Email Update May 24, 2024)

Nurses at Montefiore’s Hutchinson (Hutch) campus are fighting to make sure children get quality care that is suitable for children. Montefiore has started to shift surgeries for pediatric patients to the Hutch ambulatory surgery center from its full-service Children’s Hospital at Montefiore before properly staffing and training nurses to care for new pediatric patients and address their concerns about patient safety. Nurses are not being equipped with the necessary training, resources, and time to feel confident they can provide the quality care these patients deserve.  

Nurses are asking for the community to join them in calling on Montefiore to prioritize pediatric patient safety. They attended a Community Board 11 meeting on Thursday, May 23, to ask board members to demand Montefiore to do the right thing and provide nurses with appropriate training.

Nurses had several safety concerns to share with community board members. They expressed that pediatric care is highly specialized, and the skills needed to care for young patients are not immediately transferrable from adult medicine — and vice versa. Moreover, Montefiore has an excellent Children’s Hospital where surgeries have been successfully performed for years, while Hutch is an ambulatory center that has always treated only adult patients. There are no separate waiting areas or recovery rooms for pediatric patients or a connected emergency department, so if there are surgery complications or emergency situations, which can be more common in pediatric patients, these patients would have to travel to another hospital for emergency care.   

NYSNA is in solidarity with Monte Hutch nurses fighting for safe patient care. Montefiore management must do the right thing for children’s safety and provide nurses with adequate training, resources and tools to care for pediatric patients!