“Beyond the Picket Line: Impacts and Implications of Nursing Strikes” (2023-2024)
After volunteering at Mount Sinai Hospital for nearly a year, I received an email during my winter break that invited me to jump in for extra shifts in anticipation of the impending nurses’ strike. I put my name down, grudgingly accepting that I may very well be assigned a 5 a.m. or 11 p.m. shift, but ready to help out if needed. When the strike finally happened, I found myself walking up to the hospital with mixed feelings. Part of me wanted to abandon my shift, grab a sign, and join the picket line in solidarity, but the thought of patients inside forced me to honor the commitment I had signed up for.
The hallways–once filled with friendly staff and familiar smiles–were suddenly desolate and doubtful. New replacement staff had questions about everything from directions to prescription side effects; one even asked me if the patient’s heart rate was within the expected limits of the medication she had administered. There couldn’t have been a more devastating reminder of the integral role of nurses, and as I watched the sea of red hats and scarves outside, I couldn’t help but wonder: can a nursing strike ever be considered ethical? For three days, ambulances were rerouted, surgeries got postponed, and expectant mothers were turned away while hospital administration painted the nurses’ association as selfish and demanding for requesting safer staff ratios and suitable salaries. Eventually, NYC hospitals brokered deals with their nurses, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the circumstances that caused the crisis in the first place. Why does there seem to be such a disconnect when the US spends more money on healthcare than any other country in the world? It became clear that the ethical dilemma didn’t concern the strike itself, but rather the system that foments a myopic mindset fixated on siloed economic profitability.
The nuance and complexity of the issue fit perfectly with a prompt that asked us to examine a current controversy. This essay forced me to come face-to-face with important but admittedly uncomfortable questions about the field I aspire to work in. My research took me from news articles to op-eds and to papers that studied healthcare strikes and burnout across the globe. This issue of a mismatch between services performed and value ascribed is not a uniquely American one, and while the question isn’t simple, it certainly is urgent.
Diya Cherian, ‘24, was raised in Yardley, Pennsylvania, and is studying global public health and biology with a concentration in infectious disease. After joining the New Jersey Department of Health, she began focusing on healthcare-associated infections and antimicrobial resistance and became interested in the ways in which healthcare institutions pose a risk to the patients they are designed to treat. When she’s not elbow-deep in case report forms or purifying viral proteins in the lab, Diya enjoys (stress)baking for friends and family, frequenting art museums, and scouring the city for New York’s next best cappuccino. Drawing from her own experiences as a volunteer at the Mount Sinai Hospital, her essay explores the ethicality of strikes in healthcare in a system that prioritizes profits over patients.