LaTesha Smith was cleaning a station at BronxCare, a 859-bed hospital in the Claremont Village neighborhood of the Bronx, when a patient walked over to her and hit her on the side of the head.
This was not an uncommon occurrence. Smith, who has been a nurse for 12 years, says that on a normal day, the nurses in her department call security maybe five times a day, not including the incidents they are able to deescalate by themselves.
Smith was holding a bottle of bleach wipes in her hands when she was hit, and some of the liquid splashed in her eye. She was out of work for two weeks, she said.
Nearly 15,000 nurses from three of the city’s largest hospital systems are currently on strike over workplace safety, among other issues. According to a Documented analysis of 2024 injury report data from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, hospitals consistently rank among the workplaces with the highest number of reported injuries. Eight of the 10 employers in New York state with the most injuries in the analysis were hospitals. NYU Langone was the most injury-prone workplace, with Mount Sinai at number three and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center at number five. The other two businesses included Stop & Shop and Delta Airlines at John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to the analysis.
“It’s just incredible, the hazards and problems in healthcare,” David Pratt, the Health and Safety representative at the New York State Nurses Association, told Documented.
While hospitals rank high on the list of OSHA injury reports, many workplaces are heavily unionized, making it more likely that workers would report injuries, Pratt and other labor experts explained. Workers in industries like construction or delivery, where union density is weaker or doesn’t cover subcontractors, may be less likely to report when accidents happen due to fear of retaliation or pressure not to report from their bosses. Still, the data supports what the nurses are claiming: hospitals are dangerous.
Smith has been a nurse for 12 years. She says the difficulties she and her coworkers face stem from a lack of staffing.
“We see people who are having the worst days of their life, if you don’t have enough staff, Unfortunately sometimes they’ll take it out on the nurses,” she said. Understaffing can contribute to the long waits that patients face, which often heightens tensions in the hospital, she explained. Psychiatric patients can sometimes get mixed with the general population, which can cause problems as well. “We should have adequate nursing to get patients in and out. That would be the main issue in this case,” she said.
BronxCare did not respond to a request for comment. Nurses at the hospital withdrew their strike notice just days before the citywide strike after health protections were reached.
Tony Chau, a spokesperson for NewYork-Presbyterian, said officials “are committed to safe staffing and workplace safety. We have proactively hired more than 400 new nurses since our last contract in December 2022 (ratified January 2023).”
NYU Langone declined to comment. Mount Sinai didn’t respond to a request for comment.
你知道吗？非公民办理驾照时的这个错误可能会导致选民欺诈
Violence is not the only cause of injury, according to Pratt, the nurses union representative. Many people hurt themselves falling on the job, or through musculoskeletal injuries and exposure to pathogens. “The needle stick problem has not been solved in many facilities,” he said.
Documented analyzed a year of OSHA injury and illness data and found that New York had thousands of reports of injuries, ranging from fatalities to respiratory conditions to poisonings. The data is part of a forthcoming Documented project that will collate and present thousands of records of injuries at New York businesses, alongside wage theft data.
“NYSNA nurses continue to fight for protections against workplace violence because no nurse should fear for their safety on the job,” NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said in a statement. “Workplace violence is directly related to access to care and safe staffing — it’s a complicated problem that is only growing. However, hospitals need to do their part to protect nurses and patients and invest in the safety of their communities.”
