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

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. (AP) — When thousands of New York City nurses walked off the job last month in the city’s largest strike of its kind in decades, 9-year-old Logan Coyle was a patient in the cancer unit at NewYork-Presbyterian’s children’s hospital in Manhattan.

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

But as the nurses formed their picket outside the hospital, he held up a handmade sign outside his window: “Proud of My Primaries.”

Morgan Bieler, one of Logan’s longtime, primary nurses, said the sight was a jolt of encouragement in those early, uncertain hours of the walkout, which, at the outset, involved roughly 15,000 nurses across some of the city’s most prestigious hospitals.

“In that moment, it kind of reinforced like, ‘This is why we’re doing this’,” she said recently. “If he can fight for as long as he has and as hard as he has, then we could fight this.”

But nearly a month on, more than 4,000 nurses in the NewYork-Presbyterian system are the last on the picket line in a bitter dispute over salaries, staffing, safety, health care and other contractual issues.

The hospitals have said the union’s demands were exorbitant. They say unionized nurses’ salaries already average $162,000 to $165,000 a year, not including benefits.

The nurses have countered that top hospital executives make millions of dollars a year.

Jeff Coyle, Logan’s father, says its “infuriating” that some of the city's most vulnerable patients are caught in the middle.

“Every single day that this drags on is a severe impact to us," he said. "We are the collateral damage of this strike.”

On Monday, the nurses' union reached tentative deals with two other major systems, Mount Sinai and Montefiore. Those three-year proposals, if approved in membership votes this week, would see unionized nurses at those hospitals return to work by Saturday.

Negotiations at NewYork Presbyterian, though, have progressed slower. The hospital says it has agreed to a proposal from mediators that includes many things the union has sought, including pay raises, preserving nurses’ pensions, maintaining their health benefits and increasing staffing levels.

But the union says the strike remains in effect, and there were no plans for negotiations to resume as of Tuesday.

Logan and his family struggle

Coyle believes hospital administrators should have negotiated more aggressively rather than opting to hire thousands of temporary nurses to fill staffing gaps week after week.

“If we have to be there, each side to these contract negotiators should also be there, working as hard as they can to end this as quickly as they can,” Coyle said.

Spokespersons for NewYork-Presbyterian didn’t immediately comment Tuesday, but the hospital systems through the strike have said they have remained ready to negotiate when called on.

Logan returned home over the weekend 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 things like blood draws and lab tests took longer than normal for the replacement nurses. Gone also were the steady rounds of familiar faces dropping by, oftentimes just for a chat or to read a book.

“I like they come in and color with you so I’m not spending my whole day on the screen in my iPad world,” he said Tuesday in the family’s home in Port Washington, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from Manhattan in suburban Long Island.

“I wouldn’t want to be back there for another month without them,” Logan added. “I would feel more safer if they were all back.”

Logan's mom, Rebecca, says she spent more sleepless nights at Logan’s bedside than previous hospital stays because staffing was so inconsistent, with temporary nurses cycling in and out every few days and bringing varying levels of experience.

“I was just constantly up, checking to make sure that something was running appropriately or waiting for a medicine to arrive or waiting fluids to arrive or a blood product,” she said. “I felt like I had to be so vigilant.”

Logan’s nurse worries too

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

She said bone marrow transplants and chemotherapy treatments have been delayed or canceled entirely for some because of the staffing challenges.

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

Spokespersons for NewYork-Presbyterian didn't immediately comment Tuesday, but the hospital systems have insisted their operations are running smoothly, with organ transplants and other complex procedures largely uninterrupted.

As for Logan, Bieler says caring for the upbeat, endlessly positive boy changed her outlook on life.

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

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