The 3 emergency units at Montefiore Hospital in New York are so overcrowded and unruly that it has endangered patients and staffers.
Patients have to wait for hours to be treated and staffers are regularly attacked by psych patients. “It looks like a refugee camp in a war zone,” said nurse Benny Matthew, 41, who works at the main Moses Campus’ ER in the Norwood section of the Bronx. “I’m from India. Even if I go to an emergency room in my country, I don’t see things like this.”
City councilman Ritchie Torres, alarmed by the harrowing accounts from hospital staffers, sent a letter to the Department of Investigation calling for an immediate probe. Torres decided to write the letter after he was approached by a group of nurses working at Montefiore who complained to him about the horrendous conditions that patients and workers have to constantly deal with.
“Relegating recipients of Medicaid to cramped and crowded hallways — teeming with sick patients, many of them with infections — creates an environment conducive to more illness, not less,” wrote Torres.
In an interview, Torres said “There seems to be a profound disconnect between the immaculate image Montefiore projects out to the public and the nightmarish reality of its own emergency room.”
Montefiore spokeswoman Elizabeth Kaledin said, “We cannot speak to where these staffing numbers come from but they do not match ours. We continuously monitor our staffing levels to provide the best, safest care for our patients.”
Frustrated hospital staffers insist they’ve been complaining to higher-ups about the conditions, but the pleas for help have fallen on deaf ears.
“It’s heartbreaking to try to deliver the care that you want to give and you can’t do it because you don’t have the resources,” said Xenia Greene, a pediatric ICU nurse at Montefiore’s main site in Norwood.
Greene said the pediatric emergency room is often so overcrowded she’s forced to take care of up to a dozen children at once. At most hospitals, she said, the ratio is one pediatric ICU nurse to three patients. “It’s physically impossible to provide the empathetic, compassionate loving care when you’re dealing with that kind of ratio,” Greene said. “I can go without eating for 12 hours. I can go without a break. But I can’t make another nurse appear on my own.”
Clearly, changes need to be made to ensure patients receive the right care in a timely fashion and staff members are protected at all times.
NYDN Article:
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-metro-montefiore-hospital-er-unit-dangerously-overcrowded-20180803-story.html