Healthcare workers across the state of New York are being given an ultimatum: get the Covid-19 Vaccine or lose your job. Healthcare workers have the right to bodily autonomy just like every patient they faithfully serve. On September 27, 2021 when the mandate goes in to effect, thousands of healthcare workers in NY state will be fired and that will cause an immediate and catastrophic staffing shortage that will put patient safety at risk. Below is a letter from the nurses of one such NY hospital. Do you have a loved one who is a healthcare worker? Will you need to be treated at a hospital in the future? Then it is in your best interest to sign this petition to help us reverse the mandate and save our healthcare workers so that they can one day save you!

To Whom It May Concern,

As the nurses of Maimonides, this is our time to speak. Throughout the pandemic we were lauded as heroes for coming to work and doing our jobs and we were told we were essential. You touted over and over again that we are #OneMaimonides. Today you still believe we are #OneMaimonides but in actuality you are dividing us into #TwoMaimonides. With the enforcement of the NY State Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate for Healthcare Workers, the message is clear, you can do without us, we are disposable, and we are no longer essential to the operation of this hospital and to the safety of the patients we serve. For those of us that believe we have bodily autonomy and the ability to make appropriate medical decisions for ourselves, we should not be coerced to changing our decision with the threat of losing our jobs if we do not comply. Instead of you dividing us, and our voices, as being either vaccinated or unvaccinated, we, are choosing to speak as one voice. We will be the true #OneMaimonides you speak of. When nurses come together and speak as one voice, that voice is strong and powerful and is always on behalf of our patients. We feel implored to bring to your attention the unmitigated disaster this mandate will cause to safe staffing for our patients. We speak as the close to 400 Maimonides nurses who are not vaccinated. And all of our vaccinated co-workers who are fearful for our patients after our disposal stand in solidarity with us. We know that if we do not speak now, it may be too late for our patients.

As nurses who are at the bedside 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and know what it is like to work short staffed, and the real consequences that come from working short staffed, we are fearful that mandating that healthcare personnel get vaccinated for Covid-19 or face termination will make existing staffing shortages catastrophically worse. On August 23, 2021 The New York Times ran an article entitled, “Nursing In Crisis: Staff Shortages Put Patients at Risk.” The article soberly stated that when hospitals are understaffed, people die. On July 21, 2021 our own nurses' union, NYSNA stated "having fewer nurses and healthcare workers available to battle the pandemic would be a great risk to patient safety at this time.” As nurses on the frontlines we know this to be the case. The Covid-19 vaccine mandate has been touted as being necessary for patient safety. But that reasoning is short sighted and a strategic miscalculation, which can actually lead to dire consequences for our patients. This mandate was made by government bureaucrats who have never once worked a shift in a hospital with safe staffing ratios, let alone inadequate and unsafe staffing ratios. How someone who sits in an office in Albany can have the audacity to make a mandate that does not take into consideration any short or long term consequences, or what burden you are creating for the nurses who will remain to care for patients is unfathomable. Once the September 27th deadline comes and goes, and employees either take the vaccine or are terminated, hospitals will suffer, which in turn means patients will suffer. Hospitals who already have immense nurse shortages will have that crisis exacerbated. How will hospitals be able to take care of people who show up to their ERs, L&Ds, surgical centers, cancer centers? The simple answer is that they will not be able to. You will subsequently burnout your remaining nurses who have already been pushed to the edge by the pandemic.

Nurses know universal protocols, proper hand-washing techniques, how to properly use PPE, and are masked at all times during their encounters with patients. And yet they are being told that they are posing a grave risk to their patients by being unvaccinated, even though the CDC has acknowledged breakthrough infections among the vaccinated as well as their ability to still transmit Covid-19 to others. Those same patients you are so concerned for, are going to be in greater jeopardy when they do not have a nurse to care for them at all. This Covid-19 vaccine mandate is going to create a catastrophic and yet avoidable problem that will without a doubt put patients at risk. Hospitals have a duty to protect the patients that choose them for safe and quality care. Government bureaucrats are being near sighted and are only looking at one angle of this problem. They apparently are either completely oblivious to the staffing crisis they are about to unleash or they do not care about, have not planned for, and offer no solutions to the fallout from this mandate. You however know the consequences and can do something about it before it is too late. Give us a voice. Give us a choice. Give us the ability to care for our patients as we have done throughout this unprecedented pandemic and will continue to do far in to the future, if you let us. Fight for your employees who fought and continue to fight for every patient that walks through our doors. Do not stand by and turn your back on us now.

Sincerely,
The Nurses of Maimonides