Arbitrator: NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn unjustly fired UFT nurses

Arbitrator James A. Brown rejected NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn's claims that the nine nurses were at fault when a woman gave birth in a hallway outside the hospital's Labor and Delivery Unit.

"The arbitrator saw the truth. NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn created a hazardous situation through its incompetence and neglect and then tried to scapegoat and vilify the nurses," said Anne Goldman, head of the Federation of Nurses/UFT, which represents roughly 1,000 nurses at NYU Langone Hospital- Brooklyn and 16,000 nurses across New York State.

In his Jan. 21 opinion, Brown found NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn bore much of the responsibility for the unsupervised birth through its own negligence and short-staffing. He ruled the Sunset Park hospital must reinstate all nine nurses, with back pay and no loss of seniority.

"Hospital management did everything it could to try to demean and break the nurses and tarnish their reputations. But our nurses knew the truth and refused to back down, over two years and a 14-day hearing. And the union was with them every step," said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers.

The hospital had charged the nine nurses with failure to assist a pregnant woman and her husband who were sent to the hospital's Labor and Delivery Unit on Dec. 11, 2022. The couple was sent unescorted, unannounced, and got lost.

At least four hospital employees interacted with the couple and none flagged the woman as a patient before the couple found their way to the Labor and Delivery Unit, according to the opinion.

That day as often happens, the Unit had no clerk, the person responsible for screening, questioning, and registering people seeking to enter the locked ward, the opinion noted. The Nurses' Station had no intercom system connected to the unit doors. Staff is trained not to open unit doors to non-screened persons unless in a medical emergency.

The couple was visible on the Nurses's Station security monitor for 53 seconds as the husband pressed the intercoms at the Visitor and Post-Anesthesia Care Unit doors. The nine nurses were at or near the Nursing Station. In her testimony, the hospital's Senior Director of Nursing Eileen DiFrisco acknowledged that the woman on the video "did not appear to be in any distress."

The couple then moved out of range on the security monitor. The next time she was seen, the woman was giving birth in the 5th-floor hallway. Staff immediately tended to the woman and infant.

Brown's opinion stated there were "so many obstacles to actually making contact with the couple." He found eight of the nine nurses "not guilty" of any misconduct or violation. The ninth, a nurse supervisor, received a three-day suspension but was otherwise reinstated with back pay.

After the birth and investigation, NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn installed a new, upgraded intercom system that allows communication between the Nurses's Station and anyone seeking to enter the unit through any of the three doors. The new system can also remotely unlock the three doors from the Nurses' Station. The hospital reworked the signage to help patients get to the right location and required Lobby Screeners to announce patients as they were taken upstairs.

Union leaders said they and the nurses were particularly incensed by the hospital's contention that the targeted nurses showed a supposed lack of remorse that "solidified the Hospital's decision to terminate."

Brown dismissed the hospital's argument.

"The Grievants, who have no prior discipline and many commendations in their employment histories, should have been given the benefit of the doubt that their failure to show remorse reflected their genuine belief that the Hospital was at fault," Brown wrote.

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