A young cancer patient and his family worry nearly a month into New York City nurses’ strike

PORT WASHINGTON, New York — When thousands of New York City nurses walked off the job last month in the city’s largest such strike in decades, 9-year-old Logan Coyle was a patient in the cancer unit at NewYork-Presbyterian Children’s Hospital in Manhattan.

Logan was recovering from his latest setback during a two-year battle with advanced liver cancer that already included chemotherapy and a complex triple transplant of a liver, pancreas and small intestine.

But as nurses formed their picket outside the hospital, he walked to his window and held up a handmade sign: “Proud of my primaries.”

Morgan Bieler, one of Logan’s longtime primary care nurses, said the sight was a breath of encouragement in these uncertain early hours of the walkout, which at first involved about 15,000 nurses at some of the city’s most prestigious hospitals.

“At that point, it kind of solidified like, ‘This is why we’re doing this,’” she said recently. “If he can fight as long and as hard as he did, then we could fight this.”

But nearly a month later, more than 4,000 nurses from New York’s Presbyterian system are the last on the picket line.

Jeff Coyle, Logan’s father, says it’s “infuriating” that some of the city’s most vulnerable patients are caught in the middle of a bitter dispute over wages, staffing levels, workplace safety, health care and other contractual issues.

“Every day that this lasts is a serious impact for us,” he said. “We are the collateral damage of this strike.”

On Monday, the nurses union reached tentative agreements with two other major systems, Mount Sinai and Montefiore. These proposals, if approved in member votes this week, would see unionized nurses at these hospitals return to work by Saturday.

Negotiations at NewYork-Presbyterian, however, were more difficult.

On Tuesday evening, the nurses union said it was calling on its New York Presbyterian members to vote on a proposal accepted by hospital administrators but rejected by the union’s negotiating committee.

The union said the agreement “addresses the same contract priorities” its negotiators reached with other hospital systems, including a 12 percent pay increase over three years.

“The simple fact is that we have reached the end of negotiations,” Pat Kane, the union’s executive director, said in a video message sent to New York Presbyterian nurses and provided to The Associated Press.

“You deserve to vote on this. You fought so hard to get to this point,” union president Nancy Hagans added in the video.

Logan returned home Saturday after having a tumor removed near his spine. But he said he noticed the difference between his regular nurses and the temporary replacements almost immediately.

Routine tasks like blood draws and lab tests took longer than usual for substitute nurses. Gone, too, were the regular rounds of familiar faces passing by, often just to chat or read a book.

“I like that they come and color with you, so I’m not spending my whole day on the screen in my iPad world,” he said Tuesday at his family’s home in Port Washington, about 25 miles from Manhattan on suburban Long Island.

“I wouldn’t want to go back for another month without them,” added Logan, who also has a twin sister, Riley. “I would feel safer if they were all back.”

Logan’s mother, Rebecca, says she spent more sleepless nights at her son’s bedside than during her previous hospital stays because the temporary nurses who came and went every few days had varying levels of experience.

“I was constantly on my feet, checking to make sure something was working properly or waiting for medication to arrive or waiting for fluids or a blood product to arrive,” she said. “I felt like I had to be very vigilant.”

Bieler says she worries daily about her long-term patients still in the hospital.

She said bone marrow transplants and chemotherapy treatments have been delayed or canceled entirely for some due to staffing issues.

“We are not the only pawns in this matter, that’s what I mean,” Bieler said. “They are playing with children’s lives, and I can’t imagine how frustrating that is for our community. »

Spokespeople for NewYork-Presbyterian did not immediately comment Tuesday, but the hospital systems insisted their operations were running smoothly, with organ transplants and other complex procedures largely uninterrupted.

As for Logan, Bieler says caring for this optimistic and endlessly positive boy has changed his outlook on life.

“He is always the best version of himself and he faces everything with a smile,” she said. “I don’t think I would be a nurse, let alone the person I am today, without him and his family. »

___

Follow Philip Marcelo at https://x.com/philmarcelo