New York Nurse: February 2021 by New York State Nurses Association

nurse New York

Lift every voice and sing

New york state edition | february 2021

Celebrating Black History Month

New York Nurse february 2021

EQUITY vs EQUALITY Subtle differences can mean a great deal. Equality: means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities. By Judy SheridanGonzalez, RN NYSNA President

Advocating for patients. Advancing the profession.SM Board of Directors President Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, RN, MSN, FNP judy.sheridan-gonzalez@nysna.org First Vice President Anthony Ciampa, RN anthony.ciampa@nysna.org Second Vice President Karine M. Raymond, RN, MSN karine.raymond@nysna.org Secretary Tracey Kavanagh, RN, BSN tracey.kavanagh@nysna.org Treasurer Nancy Hagans, RN nancy.hagans@nysna.org Directors at Large Anne Bové, RN, MSN, BC, CCRN, ANP anne.bove@nysna.org Judith Cutchin, RN judith.cutchin@nysna.org Jacqueline Gilbert, RN jackie.gilbert@nysna.org Robin Krinsky, RN robin.krinsky@nysna.org Lilia V. Marquez, RN lilia.marquez@nysna.org Nella Pineda-Marcon, RN, BC nella.pineda-marcon@nysna.org Verginia Stewart, RN verginia.stewart@nysna.org Marva Wade, RN marva.wade@nysna.org Vacant Regional Directors Southeastern Yasmine Beausejour, RN yasmine.beausejour@nysna.org Southern Sean Petty, RN sean.petty@nysna.org Central Marion Enright, RN marion.enright@nysna.org Lower Hudson/NJ Jayne Cammisa, RN, BSN jayne.cammisa@nysna.org Western Chiqkena Collins, RN chiqkena.collins@nysna.org Eastern Vacant Executive Editor Pat Kane, RN, CNOR Executive Director Editorial offices located at: 131 W 33rd St., New York, NY 10001 Phone: 212-785-0157 Email: communications@nysna.org Website: www.nysna.org Subscription rate: $33 per year ISSN (Print) 1934-7588/ISSN (Online) 1934-7596 ©2020, All rights reserved

Equity: recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.

here is a philosophical difference imbedded in these two concepts. Equity is based on an historical analysis. Equality is a stand-alone concept; an ideal, but insufficient in and of itself to address social conditions and is therefore ahistorical, ironically disconnected from the origins of inequality itself. Many of us are familiar with the concept of “making the employee whole” as a resolution to a grievance. A member’s rights were violated by those in power (administration) and thus, measures need to be taken to correct the violation that took place — something tangible must be given to the employee: time, money, a promotion, a benefit, etc. In addition, a systems problem needs to be corrected to avoid a similar event from occurring again. If it’s a class action grievance, an entire class of employees needs to be “made whole,” and the systems issue corrected for the class. Finally, there needs to be a monitoring mechanism put in place to ensure that the agreement is enforced. This scenario illustrates an attempt to establish equity for those who suffered, who were aggrieved. Addressing hundreds of years of systemic racism and racial discrimination requires the same form of justice. Equity requires special actions to take place to begin to tackle the harmful effects of this ill-fated legacy. A legacy is defined as: something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor, or from the past. Knowing our collective past, as a society, is essential to understand its impact.

Black History Month gives us a tiny window into this past. Likewise, Women’s History Month, and other special days or months provide us with information sorely missing from our education that focus on the contributions and challenges faced by marginalized people and cultures. Perhaps one day, all these stories will be incorporated into a complete history, mitigating the need to make up the deficit. Dr. Martin Luther King described the impact of institutionalized racism as it is manifested in health care: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” While we see this every day in our practice and in our communities, the ravages of COVID illustrated it in statistics that shocked even the skeptics. African-Americans (and Latinos and Native Americans) succumbed to the Corona virus at rates two times greater than did Caucasians. Infection rates, hospitalizations and severity of illness were also grossly disproportionate to other populations. Joblessness, hunger, loss of homes, devastation of neigh-

borhoods in communities of color showed similar imbalances. All Americans suffered as a result of the Pandemic, but race and social class — and being front line workers, like nurses — were determinant demographics in the degree of hardship. At the height of the first wave last Spring, the wealthiest New Yorkers fled to second and third homes or resorts, in safer, spacious areas. They could work remotely; they could continue to receive an income; they received the best care if they became ill. Access to quality health care, the best nutrition, higher incomes, superior education, meaningful employment, healthy exercise, leisure and relaxation, larger and beautiful living spaces, ability to travel and vacation, communities free from violence and blight, access to expert legal advice and lawyers, thus minimizing incarceration, receiving respectful treatment by authorities and businesses — these privileges are out of reach of most communities of color and the poor. These are key concepts in understanding the social determinants of health. In addition, the stresses of prejudice and mistreatment alone are major contributors to illness and despair. Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. Through understanding the legacy of inequality, the measures that must be taken to right the wrongs, and the will to make these changes, we will achieve an equitable society.

“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” –Emma Lazarus

NEW YORK NURSE february 2021

AG Letitia James: truth to power

etitia James is no stranger to battle. We’ve seen her in action for years, fighting the odds in her enduring quest for equity and justice. On January 28, with the release of her report, Nursing Home Response to COVID-19 Pandemic, James took on a behemoth, the New York nursing home industry, on behalf of residents and their families and the staff in those facilities. The AG’s Report sent shockwaves through the industry and the halls of power in Albany. No one was immune — from the owners and executives, to the governor and the Department of Health. Above all, it unsettled families and friends of nursing home residents, providing a clear view for the first time into the innerworkings of nursing homes during COVID and detailing the circumstances that led to the demise of their loved ones. It has provoked outrage and sadness.

This recommendation affirms the legitimacy of our campaign for safe staffing. Now in the NYS Legislature, the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act, calls for safe staffing for nurses and other caregivers in hospitals and nursing homes through staffing ratios established by law. Letitia James has proven herself again. She remains a force for justice on behalf of working families, communities of color and others who the system has forgotten or ignored.

Public Advocate for the people As Public Advocate of NYC, the first woman of color to hold citywide office, she was with us in 2013 at Long Island College

delivered. Her efforts to keep North Central Bronx a viable facility for maternal care helped make the difference. After its closure, Letitia James would not let go, and it reopened within a year, thanks in no small measure to her appearance at our rallies and other significant events. Today, thanks to Letitia James, women from those underserved communities have quality labor & delivery and other maternal health services. It was Letitia James, again, who stood with us before the DOH Public Health and Health Planning Council, demanding full disclosure of documents in our winning fight to stop a for-profit dialysis com-

She remains a force for justice on behalf of working families, communities of color and others who the system has forgotten or ignored.

Staffing and mortality In short, the Department of Health reported 6,645 nursing home residents died of COVID-19 between March and November 2020 — a figure the AG report said failed to take into account nursing home residents who were transferred to hospitals or other care sites and died there. When those deaths were counted, the toll grew by 50%, much higher than the official NYS DOH count. What’s most critical is that the AG Report reaffirmed what we’ve reported for years: poor staffing results in higher mortality. James showed that nursing homes with the lowest CMS Star Data on staffing had mortality rates 44% higher than those with the highest ratings. The bottom line: If state law had required all nursing homes to meet the staffing levels of 5-Star CMSrated facilities, the 6,645 nursing home deaths (looking at the State’s numbers) would have been reduced to 5,094. That’s 1,551 lives that could have been saved. One of the core recommendations of the AG’s Report is to enact minimum caregiver-to-resident staffing ratios in nursing homes.

By Pat Kane, RN NYSNA Executive Director

New York State Attorney General Letitia James

Hospital: “Open for Care!” That closing threatened the health and safety of thousands of Brooklyn residents. You could not miss her presence at Interfaith Medical Center, working with a coalition to keep it open with full, fair, and continued funding. This was home turf for Letitia James. She understood clearly how critical IMC is to care for Central Brooklyn and its role as a healthcare destination for residents of many underserved communities, including communities of color. In the Bronx — the poorest congressional district in the nation — James’ took a stand and

pany from acquiring public chronic dialysis facilities at public hospitals. As with nursing homes, the mortality data was key.

From the NRA to Google James went to the source on gun violence. She filed a lawsuit against the National Rifle Association (NRA) to dissolve the organization. She is suing Facebook and Google in antitrust cases, saying that their suppression and/or acquisition of smaller competitors has amounted to an illegal social media monopoly. In Letitia James, we have a warrior for the people of New York.

New York Nurse february 2021

Black women leaders Kamala Harris

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris has made history so many times, her name is almost a synonym for making history. Her most significant achievement among many came on January 20, 2021. She was sworn in as the first Black, first South Asian American and first woman Vice President of the United States. She graduated from Howard University, the first VP to matriculate from a historically Black college or university. She credits Howard with her “sense of being and meaning.” In 2011, Kamala Harris became the first woman of color to serve as California’s Attorney General. In 2016, she was elected to the United States Senate (D-California). Harris, 56, was born in Oakland, California, the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father. On November 7, in her first speech as vice president-elect, she paid tribute to her immigrant roots and to the reach and limitation of her mother’s dreams: “When she [Shyamala Gopalan Harris] came here from India at the age of 19, she maybe didn’t quite imagine this moment,” Harris said. “But she believed so deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible.” She paid tribute to her mother and to the great melting pot of American women on whose shoulders she stood. ”So, I’m thinking about her and about the generations of women — Black women, Asian, White, Latina, and Native American women who throughout our nation’s history have paved the way for this moment tonight.”

Inequities in healthcare In her capacity as Senator, Kamala Harris attempted to address inequities of race and class in healthcare. She co-sponsored Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicarefor-all Legislation in 2017, but backtracked during the presidential primary. In July 2019, she introduced her own healthcare plan, which would allow for people to either purchase governmentadministered insurance or buy plans from private payers. It involved expanding Medicare over a 10-year period.

Recognizing that Black women are three times more likely to die from complications of pregnancy than white women, she and other members of the Black Maternal Health Caucus introduced the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act in March of last year, which, according to Becker’s Hospital Review, “would make investments in social determinants of health, community-based organizations and the growth and diversification of the perinatal workforce.” True to her commitment to women, last December Harris hired the first all-woman senior staff in history for the U.S. vice president’s office.

Stacey Abrams Stacey Abrams is living proof: you cannot keep a good woman down. Considered a strong contender in 2018 for the Georgia governor’s seat, she lost in a race said to be rife with voter suppression. Stacey Abrams did not miss a beat. Immediately following the election, Abrams was back in the ring with Fair Fight PAC, an organization dedicated to fighting voter suppression and for fair elections in Georgia and around the country. Fair Fight stands tall for voter participation, educating voters about elections and their voting rights, and building public awareness about and advocating for election reform. A former member of the Georgia House of Representatives, and a current Nobel Prize nominee, Abrams is widely credited with galvanizing hundreds of thousands of minority Georgia voters

Speaker NYS Senate Andrea StewartCousins

who normally sit out elections to vote in this year’s Georgia’s runoffs. Her get-out-the-vote efforts helped deliver two historic Senate victories: Jon Ossoff, the political novice who defeated incumbentSen. David Perdue, and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, who ousted Senator Kelly Loeffler, becoming the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate from the South. Underscoring her efforts, the New York Times ran a headline: “The 10-year Stacey Abrams project to flip Georgia has come to fruition.” Through her tireless leadership and dedication to civil rights, Stacey Abrams educated us all. Black. Votes. Matter.

Andrea StewartCousins There is an old political saw in New York: as goes Westchester, so goes the state. If there is truth in words, then New York State Senate

Former representative of the Georgia General Assembly Stacey Abrams

NEW YORK NURSE february 2021

to let go of their egos and personal preferences with the goal of the common good.” In recent years, Stewart-Cousins has stood with nurses and pledged her support to NYSNA’s issues: Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi “Nurses are tasked with the Majority Leader and President Pro enormous responTempore, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, sibility of caring for the sick, and if is a friend in high places. we want to receive quality care, we Stewart-Cousins, the State must stand with them as they fight Senator from Yonkers (D-District for safe working conditions and 35), has done more in her first term healthy work environments,” said Senator Stewart-Cousins. as Majority Leader to advance a A skilled hand at brokering progressive agenda in New York political deals under especially difthan Franklin D. Roosevelt or ficult circumstances, we look forRobert F. Kennedy, according to ward to taking a seat at the table Politico. Her ability to broker beside her in Albany. compromise among the normally fractured and fractious Democratic party has flown in the face of accepted Albany wisdom. She is revered in the Capital for spearheading recent progressive policy changes on abortion, immigration, voting rights, gender equality, gun Nothing spells black women control, LGBT rights, marijuana magic quite like the names of Black decriminalization and criminal Lives Matter co-founders Patrisse justice reform. All that and the fol- Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal lowing: she is the first woman in Tometi. They were the sparkle New York to lead a conference in that ignited the powder keg of the Legislature and its first female protest after the acquittal in 2013 of George Zimmerman for the Senate Majority Leader. murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Diversity at the table Martin in Miami Gardens, Florida. That movement grew to become a This is not her first time at the global force of reckoning against table. In 1996, Andrea Stewartpolice brutality, racial disparities Cousins was elected Westchester within the U.S. criminal legal sysCounty Legislator, where she tem, mass incarceration of black established a reputation for findpeople, police militarization and ing common ground. According over criminalization. to Senate colleague Shelley Mayer, Responding to a post by Alicia also from Westchester: Garza about the Zimmerman “Andrea was originally brought into government in the city govern- verdict — “I continue to be surprised at how little Black ment of Yonkers to be the head of lives matter... Our lives matter”, community affairs at a time when Patrisse Cullors added the hashtag, the city was just really recovering #BlackLivesMatter, and sent the and reeling from the findings of post on. Opal Tometi handled intentional racial discrimination in both schools and housing,” said the social media. What resulted Mayer. “She has the skills of bring- was a cry of outrage heard around the world. ing diverse people to the table and making them feel heard, and they are heard by her. Yonkers is a good Peaceful protest Over the next seven years, as the place to learn how to hear from different views and try to find com- body count grew, Michael Brown, mon ground and encourage people Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor,

Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi

George Floyd …, this decentralized political and social movement became an inclusive, nonviolent space to assert through peaceful protest, political campaigns and social media “that Black lives deserve the equal respect, human treatment, and level of livelihood that is experienced by their white counterparts.” In 2020, Cullors, Garza, and Tometi were named to Time’s most influential people in the world list.

Dr. Kizzmekia “Kizzy” S. Corbett Dr. Kizzy Corbett, America owes you our gratitude. In the darkest moments of the COVID pandemic, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, a 35-year-old doctorate in microbiology and immunology from UNC Chapel Hill, took the lead. The research fellow in the Vaccine Research Center of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases spearheaded the development of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine (m-RNA-1273). When COVID-19 arrived last year, Corbett was already immersed in the exploration of coronaviruses. “SARS and MERS, two coronaviruses, had already caused massive outbreaks,” she said. “And these big, challenging questions remained, along with the fact that it was clear that it could happen again. It was looming out there and just a matter of time.” Just two days after COVID-19 was discovered, Dr. Corbett rolled up her sleeves and went to work combing through six years of coronavirus research. “I like to call it the plug-and-play approach,” Corbett said. “Basically the idea [is] that we had so much knowledge based on work from us and from other labs previously that we were able to pull the trigger on vaccine development and start the ball rolling toward a phase 1 clinical trial.” The Moderna vaccine was developed in record time and was the first vaccine against COVID-19 to be approved for emergency use in the United States. Since December 18, more than 22 million Americans have received the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Continued on page 15

Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett

New York Nurse february 2021

Salaria Kea

C Harlem Hospital was the first municipal institution to embrace “the ideal of integration.”

Nurse and freedom fighter atholic, Internationalist, Memoirist, Organizer, Nurse, Salaria Kea was born on July 13, 1917 (1913 in one account), in Milledgeville, the Georgia State capital throughout the Civil War, where slave auctions took place in the Capital Square. By 1917, the bowed backs of sharecroppers and prison laborers had replaced the bent backs of slaves in the vast fields of cotton surrounding Milledgeville. These images were undoubtedly seared in young Salaria’s mind, a reminder of the invisible barricades of race and of man’s brutality to man, making her extraordinary achievements as a nurse all the more remarkable. She fought fascism on the frontlines of Spain and racial barriers in New York’s Harlem Hospital and in the U.S. Army successfully.

From Akron to New York City By most accounts, Salaria was raised by four brothers and family friends in Akron, Ohio; the whereabouts of her parents is unclear. Whatever the circumstances, Salaria’s memories of life in Akron were positive. There her early ambitions to become a nurse took hold. Even so, Salaria must have been acutely aware of the obstacles in front of her. Racial tensions were high in Akron in the first decades of the 20th century, exacerbated by the arrival of Eastern European immigrants. According to Philosopher Shirla Robinson McClain, “By the early 1920s racial barriers had been erected to the extent that blacks 1) were not served in Akron’s finer restaurants; 2) were requested to sit in the balcony in theaters; 3) could not swim in local swimming pools; 4) were refused lodging in the city’s hotels; and 5) were “invisible” in both managerial business positions and in administrative posts in the local government.” On March 1, 1915, Cleveland Clinic Akron General Hospital opened. Muriel L. Walker, the first black nurse to work there, joined the staff in 1948. Around 1930, Salaria moved to New York City, but felt herself to be an outsider. Salaria told an interviewer: “In New York [it was] just like you were in a foreign country, if

Salaria Kea, 1937

you came from Akron, because everybody had their own language.” Undaunted, she enrolled in Harlem Hospital School of Nursing, the second training school for African American nurses to open in the City. The Lincoln School of Nursing (Bronx 1898), a private institution, was first — in New York and in the United States, but Harlem Hospital was the first municipal institution to embrace “the ideal of integration.”

Desegregating NYC municipal hospitals Adam Biggs, African American Studies Professor, University of South Carolina Lancaster, wrote:

On the frontlines in Spain, 1938

“Black civic activists had been advocating to desegregate New York’s municipal hospital system since the early 1910s. But black practitioners would not gain entrance until the nation’s wartime effort placed a burden on medical staffing that could not be ignored. With a reluctant city administration, a small number of practitioners began acquiring lowlevel positions as early as 1917, and in August 1919, Louis T. Wright became the first black doctor to join the Harlem Hospital staff. Continued advocacy over the next decade pushed the hospital to gradually incorporate black physicians and nurses into its ranks. Continued on page 13

NEW YORK NURSE february 2021

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Rattling the cage of power

da B. Wells, a founding member of the National Association of Colored Women’s Club, was a lifelong advocate of civil rights and women’s suffrage and a thorn in the side of white suffragists who she openly confronted for ignoring lynching. A fearless journalist, activist, and researcher, Ida B. Wells was born into slavery on July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She rattled the cage of power from the outset, including at Rust College, where she was expelled without graduating after a dispute with the president. In 1884, she was kicked off a first-class train, although she had a ticket, and filed suit successfully in local court against the company. Her case was later overturned at the federal level. In 1892, after spending five years in an Ohio jail, William Offet, a black man, was exonerated for the rape of a white woman he did not commit. Wells, who had written profusely about lynching, responded with an editorial about “That old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women …” The reaction in Memphis, home to Free Speech, her paper, was swift and vicious. A white mob destroyed the building. Her co-owner was forced to flea. And Wells never returned to the City.

7; Louisiana, 15; Missouri, 4; Ohio, 2; Maryland, 1; West Virginia, 2; Indiana, 1; Kansas, 1; Pennsylvania, 1.”

The audacity to dream Around this time, Ida B. WellsBarnett helped found the National Association of Colored Women’s Club to combat lynchings, address issues of civil rights, and to fight racism in the suffragist movement. Following the passage of the 15th Amendment, any impetus there was in the mostly white suffragist movement to champion equality for black American women was either lost or toned down. Susan B. Anthony, historically a proponent of voting rights for all women, uttered these unfortunate words: “I

The courage to fight In 1895, Ida B. Wells married lawyer Ferdinand Barnett, the same year she wrote The Red Record, a 100 page pamphlet detailing lynching in the United States following the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The Red Record included 14 pages of statistics related to lynching cases committed from 1892 to 1895. Wells maintained the data in the pamphlet came from articles written and published by white newspapers. From The Red Record: “LYNCHING STATES Mississippi, 15; Arkansas, 8; Virginia, 5; Tennessee, 15; Alabama, 12; Kentucky, 12; Texas, 9; Georgia, Ida B. Wells, 1893 19; South Carolina, 5; Florida,

will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ask for the ballot for the Negro and not for the woman.” The words of Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National Women Suffrage Association, were even more explicit and vile: “You have put the ballot in the hands of your black men, thus making them political superiors of white women. Never before in the history of the world have men made former slaves the political master of their former mistresses!” The first conference of the National Association of Colored Women’s Club was held in 1896 in Washington, DC., thanks in no small part to Ida B. Wells-Barnett who had the courage to fight and the audacity to dream.

New York Nurse february 2021

Nurses reflect on Martin Luther “As nurses we can work towards achieving Dr. King’s vision of equality and justice for all: by ensuring we mirror the behaviors we want demonstrated; by acknowledging the performance of others in an unbiased and transparent manner; and by giving positive feedback when deserving. Long live the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

Rasheda M. Henry, RN, HN Queens Hospital Medical Center

“Dr. King believed in “Martin Luther King Jr. opened the door for people like myself to be able to live life to its greatest potential. There was a time here when African Americans were not given the chance to fulfill their potential. Because of Dr. King I am able to treat patients that do and do not look like me. He set

a legacy for us to continue to make sure we treat each other equally and support everyone. His continuous fight for equality is why we do not give up! I am grateful that Martin Luther King Jr. has given me the opportunity to be a nurse and save lives. I am able to give back to my community because of how he dedicated his life to equality and peace.”

economic and equal rights for all, caring deeply about the human condition. As nurses, we are healers, educators, and advocates. Our patients are equal in our eyes. Part of our

Nurses Prayer asks to give hope to those in our service. My pledge is to devote myself to the welfare of others. We do that by using our voice in peaceful protest, a hallmark of Dr. King's revolution, to advocate both in and out of the hospital. In the land of plenty, we must speak out and demand rights for all our brothers and sisters.

“As nurses we have the honor and privilege of being voted as the most trusted profession in the nation. It is our responsibility to ensure that we advocate for all people to have increased resources in their communities in order to be more engaged in the health of their families and themselves. As we strive for ”Healthcare For All” we are upholding and working towards achieving King’s vision of equality and justice for all.”

Alizia McMyers, RN NYC Health+Hospitals/ Harlem

Zina Klein, RN Westchester Medical Center

Nancy Hagans, RN Maimonides Medical Center

“Nurses are the keepers of lives and the vessels created to uphold the mantle of Dr. King’s vision of justice and equality for all. Nurses must stand up and help pave the way for truth, justice and to protect all lives. Dr. King said when we work with hands and hearts together, we build a world where everyone thrives. There is no better time to be a nurse than this moment. It presents so many opportunities for nurses to be at the forefront of justice. We are doing heroic work; however, heroes are the ones who lead the charge for change.”

Phoenix Tinson, MSN, RN NYC Health+Hospitals/ Queens

“MLK’s vision resonates now more then ever, because while one would argue that previously progress has been made in pursuit of equality, it is quite apparent that there has been regression in obtaining equality. We shouldn’t have to strive for a seat at the table of equality. It should be shared, and shared without violence.”

Gaile Beckford, RN Flushing Hospital Medical Center

black history month

NEW YORK NURSE

february 2021

King Jr.

“If you are silent in the face of oppression, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

”Stand up even if it means you stand alone sometimes.”

Lona Denisco, RN

Steven Bailey, RN

Erie County Medical Center

Terrace View Long Term Care

“As people across this nation

“All patients should have equal treatment regardless of what color they are or what countries they are from. We have to advocate for all our patients to prevent injustices and any unsafe care.”

Michelle Minto, RN Jacobi Medical Center

“As nurses we stand together to fight for equality and justice in healthcare and seek the same equity in access and quality sought after by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Our nursing oath tells us to devote ourselves to the welfare of humanity through advocacy, accountability, and truth. We work towards a greater future for all of the community members we serve regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexuality.”

Lily M. Werenczak, RN St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center

remember and celebrate Dr. King and his “dream,” the reality is that his “dream” has never been further away from our sight as it is now, given the recent events that occurred throughout most of 2020 amongst black and brown people across this nation. Racism was not only put into the spotlight, it was given a voice and empowered to be vocal by individuals in various positions of power, culminating in its demonstration of “privilege” as witnessed by many all over the U.S. on January 6th, 2021. The racial divide in the U.S. is at its greatest since Civil Rights became an issue to tackle. History is, in fact, repeating itself.

Reginalt Atangan, RN NYC Health+Hospitals/ Queens

“As nurses, we can uphold and work toward achieving King’s vision of equality and justice by loving one another and treating each other as brothers and sisters.”

Aretha Morgan, RN ewYork-Presbyterian N Columbia Hospital

New York Nurse february 2021

Paving the way Sarah Parker Remond

bolitionist, nurse, physician, early suffragette, Sarah Parker Remond and her brother, Charles Lenox Remond, delivered speeches advocating women’s suffrage at the eighth National Women’s Rights Convention held May 1858 at Mozart Hall in New York City. They were honored for their speeches. Born in 1826 in Salem, Massachusetts, Sarah Remond was a free Black woman and one of

She was a member of the American Equal Rights Association, but left the United States after a split in the women’s suffrage movement following the U.S. Civil War. In Britain, Sarah Remond joined the London Emancipation Committee and in 1863, she helped found the executive committee of the Ladies’ London Emancipation Society. In 1866, 1500 women were signatories to a petition requesting the right of women to vote. Remond is thought to be the only black woman who signed.

An enduring legacy Sarah Remond went on to study medicine in Florence at Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, one of the most prestigious medical schools in Europe, training to be a doctor. In 1999, she was one of six women honored by the Massachusetts State House with a bronze bust on a tall marble panel. In 2020, University College London renamed its Centre for the Study of Racism & Racialisaition the Sarah Parker Remond Centre.

Susan Smith McKinney Stewart

I Sarah Parker Remond

eight children from a well-known abolitionist family. She was first and foremost an antislavery advocate, but she was also a committed advocate of women’s rights, touring the Northeast in support of universal suffrage. Later in life, she would matriculate from London University College, graduating as a nurse.

Women's right to vote In 1853, according to the Archives of Women’s Political Communication at the University of Iowa, “Remond was forced to leave a theater and pushed down a flight stairs after she refused to sit in a segregated section. She sued for damages and won, and the court ordered the theater to integrate its seating.”

n 1870, Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward was the first black woman in Brooklyn to receive a medical degree, the third black physician to matriculate nationwide, and the valedictorian of her graduating class. For Dr. McKinney Steward, her practice was also a forum to learn about, and attempt to address, society’s ills. A champion of racial inclusion and women’s rights, Dr. McKinney Steward played a prominent role in the Black community and the women’s movement. She was the co-founder of the Women’s Loyal Union and with her sister Sarah Smith Garnet, the first black woman principal in New York City, she helped to found the Equal Suffrage League of Brooklyn in the 1880s. Sarah Smith Garnet would become its first president. Susan Smith McKinney Steward was born in 1847 in Weeksville, Brooklyn, the seventh of ten children, all well-educated and socially

Susan Smith McKinney Stewart

conscious. She received her medical degree from New York Medical College for Women and did clinical practice at nearby hospitals, including Bellevue. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran an article at the time indicative of the kind of treatment McKinney Steward and other aspiring female physicians may have encountered there: “Whether women should be admitted to the medical and other professions is a question fairly open to discussion, but the manner in which the students at Bellevue debate it will hardly carry conviction to the meanest and narrowest mind. Their method is that of insult and brutality toward the members of the Women’s Medical College who, under the Bellevue rules, are permitted to attend the clinics. When the ladies appear they are greeted with hisses, indecent language, paper balls and other missiles, and even grosser affronts are offered …”

Special care for children Dr. McKinney Steward was undeterred. She went on to specialize in prenatal care and childhood diseases and was best known for her treatment of malnutrition in children. She practiced at the Brooklyn Home for Aged Colored People, now the Brooklyn Home for the Aged, one of the first medical institutions in Weeksville, and helped found the Homeopathic Hospital, staffed entirely by women.

healthcare disparities

NEW YORK NURSE

february 2021

NYSNA tackles healthcare inequities in new report

YSNA is set to release a new report exploring healthcare disparities, Unequal Empire: How Montefiore’s Expansion Reinforces Racial Disparities in Healthcare. The report examines Montefiore’s record of hospital acquisition and expansion, resourcing of its different facilities in its primary expansion area of the Hudson Valley, and ultimately, the health outcomes in those communities. The report finds that Montefiore is not meeting the healthcare needs

Report excerpt: The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed long-standing racial disparities in healthcare. Numerous reports from 2020 have shown that a person’s zip code largely determined whether they contracted COVID-19, whether they had underlying medical conditions that made their COVID symptoms more severe, whether they were hospitalized, the quality of care they received, and whether they recovered or not. The time is past due to confront racism as a public health crisis. One way to begin finding solutions to how systemic racism plays out in healthcare is to examine the actions of healthcare providers and healthcare policy decision-makers in either reinforcing or dismantling the inequities that exist in the healthcare system.

of all the communities it serves; and its expansion and investments have further reinforced systemic racial disparities. Endorsed by sev-

eral community and elected leaders in Westchester, the report details several solutions to increase equity and promote healthcare justice.

Adah Belle Samuels Thoms Adah Belle Samuels Thoms, a 1905 graduate of Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing, was a lifelong champion of women. Among her many accomplishments, she hosted the organizational meeting of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in New York City, and served as president from 1916 to 1923. Adah Belle Samuels Thoms was no stranger to racial discrimination. Following her graduation from the Lincoln School for Nurses, she became its acting director from 1906 to 1923. As a matter of policy, she was never made director. Throughout her career, Thoms advocated for full integration and equal opportunity for African American nurses in nursing education programs, employment opportunities, and equal pay. She fought hard to desegregate the American Red Cross and the United States Army, and was the author of The Pathfinders, the first history of black Nurses. According to Lillian Wald, nursing pioneer and founder in 1893 of the Henry Street Settlement: ”Mrs. Thoms' leadership is significant not only for her own race but for those socially minded person of every race who cherish high purposes and unselfish accomplishments that bring promise of better relationships between people.” Adah Belle Samuels Thoms was born in Virginia in 1870, and died in New York in 1943.

New York Nurse february 2021

Counterfeit N95s flood the PPE market Millions of counterfeit N95s, many copies of popular 3M models, have been found throughout the country, many having made their way into healthcare facilities. In just one warehouse in Queens, NY, almost 2 million fake N95s were found. Counterfeit N95s are unlikely to provide adequate protection either because they do not provide a proper fit and/or do not have sufficient filtering material. At this time counterfeit N95s have been identified in 2 hospitals where NYSNA represents nursing staff. Albany Medical Center was notified by a federal agency that they had purchased N95s from a vendor found to be selling counterfeit N95s. At Flushing Hospital, a quick acting NYSNA member, Michelle Jones, contacted hospital management after reading about the counterfeit respirators in an email from NYSNA Executive Director Pat Kane. The hospital checked their supply and found N95s that matched information on identified counterfeit N95s. (Add quote from Michelle Jones) Specific information on which makes/ models and lot numbers are likely to be counterfeit can be found at: https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/ media/1934748O/3m-counterfeitcommunication-letter.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/ usernotices/counterfeitResp.html In addition look for the following telltale signs that N95s may be counterfeit: l Poor fit l Unusual odor l Lot # on respirator does not match l l l l l

lot # on box 3M stamp off center Typos Irregular staples Box printing substandard From Peru

If you believe that you may have been issued a counterfeit respirator, contact your NYSNA representative and the NYSNA Health & Safety representative at healthandsafety@nysna.org.

More NYSNA facilities dump N95 reprocessing, leaving Albany Med as an outlier

hen COVID-19 first surged last Spring, a dangerous practice of “disinfecting” disposable N95 respirators reared up. Based on shoddy science, and an affront to healthcare workers who were putting their lives on the line, very few employers around New York State adopted the practice. Of the dozen NYSNA-organized facilities that did show interest, most of them collected N95s for a while, but then set them aside for future reprocessing, in case of a future shortage, and did not force staff to use the reprocessed equipment. Now two more facilities out of the few who did continue with the practice have dropped it. After meeting with NYSNA recently, Samaritan announced that they would no longer reprocess N95s. “It took members and NYSNA staff pushing back at the hospital’s policy on reprocessing N95s to finally get them to stop,” Samaritan RN and LBU Co-Chair Val Hasner said. Samaritan followed on the heels of St. Elizabeth in Utica, where management stopped the practice mid-2020 after staff complaints led to a Joint Commission intervention.

Fighting back and winning NYSNA members at St. Charles and St. Catherine of Sienna on Long Island were also able to stop the practice during 2020. NYSNA members at St. Charles used the NYS requirement for a 90-day supply of PPE to push back. Members at St. Catherine of Sienna protested the process of disinfecting and reusing respirators at labor-management meetings, unit meetings and on social media. Nurses also refused to use the used respirators and demanded new ones for patient care. Their perseverance finally paid off. “We told nurses that they had to protect themselves and wear a properly fitting respirator,” says St. Catherine nurse Lorraine Incarnato. “We gave a lot of push back and made manage-

ment aware of the governor’s mandate of 1 new N95 per shift. We now get a new N95 each shift.” Some facilities have also deployed a strategy of using different kinds of respirators. St. Charles has staff who can’t get a fit with N95s use PAPRs. Northwell uses elastomerics for the same purpose, as does St. Johns Riverside. St. Lawrence Health System had started reprocessing N95s, but then obtained elastomerics for staff in the ED and those who needed difficult-to-find small sizes. The Brooklyn Hospital Center obtained enough elastomerics for all frontline staff to use during a surge. Centerlight, a home health provider, recently obtained elastomerics for their staff.

And then there was one Soon just one NYSNArepresented facility was still reprocessing N95s: Albany Medical Center (AMC). AMC was actually reprocessing each N95 up to 20 times — until NYSNA members organized and together with the pressure of an OSHA complaint got that reduced to 4 times. Then AMC announced that effective February 8 they would no longer reprocess N95s. Alas that lasted only a few days. They retracted that position and announced they would start again due to a counterfeit N95 scam. Some of their N95 models were from a fraudulent batch of 3M equipment.

N95 respirators are not designed for reuse; they are designed to be used once and thrown away. When they are subjected to “disinfection” processes, like the use of Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2), or UV light, the material is degraded. H2O2 is an oxidizer and interacts with the plastics used in the mask and straps of the N95. Ultraviolet light also degrades plastic components. Promoters of these processes, like Battelle/Biaquell, ignore this. The “study” used to get FDA emergency use approval, in fact, was Battelle’s own data, and not an independent study of the potential impact of the process on fit and performance. Why, then, is a facility like Albany Medical Center still reprocessing N95s? Good question. Nearly all other facilities have been able to secure enough N95s for staff to use in many care settings, at least one per shift. They have also had to comply with the state’s directive that they have a 90-day supply in reserve. Millions of N95s have been added to city and state stockpiles. Meanwhile, AMC seems to be holding fast to this unsafe — and unnecessary — process. They were also, until 2 days ago (at press time), one of very few facilities that restricted N95 use to aerosolizing procedures. After continuous pressure, AMC staff were notified this week that the hospital would provide staff with N95s when they treat COVID-positive patients or PUIs for COVID as recommended by the CDC and required by OSHA. According to AMC nurse Lenore Granich-Berhela, NYSNA pressure helped move AMC management. “We won’t stop until every staff person gets a new, clean N95 whenever they need one.”

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Nurse and freedom fighter Continued from page 6

“… Shortly after their appointments, the hospital saw a mass exodus of white practitioners who transferred or resigned in protest. Many of those remaining displayed their discontent by acting with belligerence or passive aggression toward the new black hires. Tensions reached a peak in 1927 when a hospital riot was barely averted after a junior white intern, dining in the cafeteria, threw water in the face of Aubré Maynard, a senior resident at the time.”

On the frontlines In the early 1930s, Salaria Kea, a nursing student endowed with an iron will, unflappable determination, and enduring courage, would participate in the campaign to integrate finally and successfully the hospital’s staff dining room. Later, she would draw a parallel in her memoirs (Salaria wrote four) between the nurses she encountered at Harlem Hospital and the Spanish peasants she met on the frontlines of the Spanish Civil War: “The Spanish peasants had been psychologically just as imprisoned, had accepted the belief that nothing could be done about their situation as had the Harlem nurses earlier accepted racial discrimination in their dining room. Like the Harlem nurses, too, the peasants were now learning that something could be done about it….There was nothing inviolable about the old prejudices…they could be changed and justice established.” Salaria graduated from nursing school in 1934, and went to work at Staten Island’s Seaview Hospital, the largest facility at the time for the treatment of tuberculosis in the United States. It was, according to Asylum Projects, “the first tuberculosis hospital to have a maternity ward and led the country in the treatment and caring of TB patients. Research at the hospital would help end the tuberculosis epidemic.” Salaria was promoted eventually to Seaview’s head nurse. During this time, Salaria Kea applied and was turned down by the Emperor Haile Selassie for work in Ethiopia and by the American Red Cross (ARC) to

help flood victims in the Midwest. There is reason to believe that Salaria was denied work with the Red Cross because of her race, although in 1918 Frances Reed Elliot became the first African American nurse to be admitted to that organization, an achievement that would not shield Elliot from discrimination inside its ranks. By March 1937, Salaria appears to have been radicalized by the American left. She joined the American Medical Bureau working with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Salaria was the only African American nurse and one of only a few African American women to serve in the Brigade. She and the second American Medical Unit set up the first American base hospital at Villa Paz in Spain. According to her memoir Health and Medicine, “The beds of Villa Paz were soon filled with soldiers of every degree of injury and ailment, every known race and tongue from every corner of the earth. These divisions of race, creed and nationality lost significance when they met in a united effort to make Spain the tomb of Fascism. I saw my fate, the fate of the Negro race, was inseparably tied up with their fate: the efforts of the Negroes must be allied with those of others as the only insurance against an uncertain future.”

United States — and especially in Akron — she and O’Reilly experienced extensive racism in the form of personal threats and property damage: according to various interviews, at certain points they were afraid to leave the house together.” In 1944, Salaria Kea went on to serve in World War II, when African-American women were first recruited. She coordinated desegregation campaigns in several hospitals after the war, and retired to Akron with her husband in 1973.

Desegregation at hospitals Historians and fellow volunteers have been unable to document aspects of Salaria’s time in Spain. She claimed to have been taken prisoner — for weeks in some accounts, in others days. This has been disputed. But certain facts are irrefutable. Salaria Kea met and married her husband in Spain: John Patrick O’Reilly, a member of the Irish American Brigade. She moved from unit to unit — Aragon, Lerida, Barcelona. Injured by a bomb, she recuperated in France. In May of 1938, she returned to the United States. More than two years would pass before O’Reilly could join her, in part a function of their interracial union. According to Emily Robins Sharpe, ”Once back in the

If little had changed in the cotton fields of Georgia by the time of her retirement — 492 African Americans were lynched between 1862 and 1968; not one African American would hold a seat from 1907 to 1962 in the Georgia State Assembly, the indomitable spirit of Salaria Kea had long since buried the chains she inherited as a native daughter, and dedicated her life to freedom and democracy for all people. She died on May 18, 1990, having fought the good fight with undeniable courage and dedication.

in the news

New York Nurse february 2021

Black Angel Virginia Allen

n 1947, at the age of 16, Virginia Allen, LPN, left her home in Detroit and moved to New York City. There she joined her aunt, Edna SuttonBallard, a registered nurse at Harlem Hospital, whose exemplary commitment to nursing, patients, and the community was truly inspiring. Virginia had found a role model and her calling. For the rest of her working life, nursing and organizing nurses and other healthcare workers, and treating the healthcare needs of the underserved would become her life’s mission. Virginia turns 90 this year and she spoke to New York Nurse earlier this month.

A life dedication began

NYSNA Board Member Yasmine Beausejour, RN, NYSNA Executive Director Pat Kane, RN, with Virginia Allen, LPN

Virginia Allen’s roots in the community are so many they are hard to contain on a single list, but they include: l Charter Member, The National

Council of Negro Women – Staten Island Section; l The NAACP; l The New York Urban League; l Sandy Grounds Historical Society; l The Weeksville Society; l The North Star Lions Club; l Staten Island Women’s Club

(formerly BPW); l Schomberg Center for Research

in Black Culture.

New York City in 1947 was, in her words, a “great adventure,” a place that seemed like a foreign country because so many languages were spoken on the street. Virginia took living quarters at Seaview Residence next to Seaview Hospital. It was there that her life’s dedication to hospital caregiving began. Virginia wasted no time. She went to work in the children’s ward, part of a large complex of eight pavilions with four floors each. The entire complex housed approximately 2,000 patients. All were sick with tuberculosis. It was in the children’s TB ward that Virginia was dubbed a “Black Angel.” The children in the ward gave her and other nurses the title in a gesture of gratitude for their compassion and care. Virtually every Seaview nurse at the time was African American. Virginia Allen is the last surviving Black Angel.

Virginia Allen, LPN, at dedication to murals, January 13, 2021

“This was before a vaccine was developed,” she continued. "Many of the children did not survive. I was very innocent at first.” Her memories inform the present, and her speech takes on an edge when she talks about fighting the coronavirus. “Not enough N95s!” she says. “Isn’t that a crime! We are not capable of producing very much here.” Virginia would go on to accept a job at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, known today as Interfaith Medical Center. It was there in the 1960s that Virginia, a member of 1199, would help organize the hospital. Virginia soon became a union staff rep. “We represented over 3,000 people,” she exclaimed, her voice strong and her memories

Caring for children with TB She committed ten years of care to children with TB, earning her degree as Licensed Practical Nurse. “It was a joy and a challenge working with the children,” she remembers. Some were confined for many years. “The severity of the illness was great. So I followed the isolation techniques: wear you mask and gowns properly, wash hands, take extra care,” she said.

Virginia Allen, February 12, 2021

bright. “Unions are essential. They help keep our health guidelines and professionals on target.”

15 years at SIUH In 1980, she went to work at Staten Island University Hospital, where she worked for 15 years. There she would meet a young RN, working in the OR, Pat Kane. For approaching 75 years now, Virginia has lived and worked in different boroughs throughout New York City, but she returned to the Seaview Residence to live, a place she considers home. “I was always community-minded,” says Virginia. From the moment her feet touched pavement in New York, Virginia’s community grew through Continued on page 15

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Black women leaders stumbling block to public understanding of the role of race in our society, and it sharply limits the opportunities for truly transformative collective action.”

Continued from page 5

Cori Bush Not only is Cori Bush Missouri’s first Black Congresswoman, she’s a pastor, longtime community leader, Black Lives Matter activist, and one of our own — a nurse. The Congresswoman from St. Louis was politicized in 2014 following the shooting death of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. She went on to win a campaign in November 2020. Today, her progressive platform resonates — universal basic income, a $15 minimum wage, Medicare for All, criminal justice reform and the Green New Deal.

"I am the people I serve"

An urgent call to action

Michelle Alexander

With these words, Alexander threw light on the shadows, illuminating how mass incarceration and the disproportionate arrest of Black people are the new, legal ways to keep segregation and inequality alive. Her words sparked an urgent call to action. Michelle Alexander — Stanford graduate, civil rights lawyer, educator, director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California — stands among the greats in our contemporary civil rights movement. She has helped show us the way to true reform of how we legislate race and criminal justice, and articulated a truly transformative vision for our country. There’s a better America waiting.

Michelle Alexander, you are our conscience. With the publication of her bestselling book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander called on the carpet our sentimental notions of a post-racial America: “Few Americans today recognize mass incarceration for what it is: a new caste system thinly veiled by the cloak of colorblindness. Hundreds of thousands of people of color are swept into this system and released every year, yet we rationalize the systematic discrimination and exclusion and turn a blind eye to the suffering. Our collective denial is not merely an inconvenient fact; it is a major

Michelle Alexander

one conscious of the historical record, she is fulfilled but for one moment of despair. When asked about racism, she says: “I have anger and sadness, because we have been here in the U.S. since its inception. Only the pigment of our skin is different. We are still not at all assimilated, not accepting that we are all the same.” “We are very rich but not very wise,” she continues. “We are look-

ing at a disaster coming forward if we don’t shape up.” “I feel confident that we have a competent president in office,” Virginia says. “He needs to do all he can to pass the relief bill.” Virginia has this to share with her fellow nurses: “Do the best job you can. Keep abreast of new techniques,” and most important... “Keep the faith.”

U.S. Representative Cori Bush

Of her time on the streets of Ferguson, Cori Bush said: “I didn’t set out to become an activist. That wasn’t even a thing back then,” Bush, who lived six minutes away from where Brown died, told ABC News. “I was watching my community in rage. I was watching my community just look a way and feel a way that I was unfamiliar with.” Her goal in Congress is to transform Black Lives Matter from fad to reality: to “make sure that Black lives are saved,” she said. “This one right here is going to bring some change that people who look like me can actually feel.” “I am the people I serve,” Bush said. “I’ve been abused by the police. I’ve gone through so many things. I’ve been harassed. I’ve been heavily surveilled. ... And now, to take that voice and that experience and walk that into Congress, that’s where that other change is going to come from,”

she said. “That’s how we turn it from being a fad into being actual change in our communities."

Black Angel Continued from page 14

her extraordinary compassion and concern. Virginia is a historian at the NYS Women’s Organization and she gathers local materials for the College of Staten Island Archives. “Keeping our history is so very important,” she says. As she looks back over her life,

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INSIDE

AG Letitia James: truth to power, p. 3

Nurses reflect on Martin Luther King Jr. pp. 8-9

Ida B. Wells-Barnett: rattling the cage of power, p. 7