The recent nursing strikes in New York City are making headlines, but they represent something much larger than a single labor dispute. Across the country, healthcare workers are voicing concerns that go far beyond compensation. When nurses walk picket lines, their signs tell a more complex story: demands for safer patient ratios, protection from workplace injuries, and the resources needed to provide quality care without sacrificing their own health.
Having spent over a decade developing and implementing safe patient handling programs across healthcare facilities, I’ve seen firsthand how the physical demands of patient care have evolved. These strikes are a symptom of deeper, systemic challenges facing our healthcare system. NYC won’t be the last city to face these issues.
Two Core Issues Driving the Strikes
While pay increases dominate the headlines, dig deeper into the picket signs and union demands, and you’ll find two critical themes: staffing adequacy and nurse safety. These issues are intertwined in ways that make them impossible to address in isolation.
The staffing issue is front and center in most strike demands. When nurse-to-patient ratios are stretched thin, there simply aren’t enough hands at the bedside. Nurses are forced to perform physically demanding tasks alone or with inadequate assistance, increasing both their workload and their risk of injury. Meanwhile, patients may not receive the frequent turning or repositioning they need, leading to preventable pressure injuries and other complications that hurt outcomes and drive up costs.
These staffing concerns directly feed into the safety issues nurses face. On the safety front, nurses confront dual threats. First, there’s the very real danger from combative or confused patients, a risk that has only increased with rising rates of dementia, mental health crises, and substance abuse among patient populations. Second, and often underestimated, is the physical toll of patient handling itself. Back injuries from lifting and repositioning patients remain one of the leading causes of injury among healthcare workers. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, six of the ten most dangerous occupations for back injuries are in healthcare settings. Over half of all nurses report chronic back pain, and a significant percentage leave the profession prematurely due to debilitating musculoskeletal injuries.
The Challenge of Finding Solutions
Hospital administrators face a difficult balancing act. The typical response to strikes involves negotiating wage increases, and fair compensation is absolutely important. Nurses deserve to be paid well for demanding, essential work. However, wage increases address only one dimension of a multifaceted problem. They don’t reduce injury rates or create additional capacity at the bedside. They don’t eliminate the physical toll of patient handling tasks.
For hospital leaders already operating on thin margins, this presents a genuine dilemma. They want to support their nursing staff and meet financial demands, but they also need to find sustainable solutions that improve safety and operations over the long term. Meeting wage demands without addressing the underlying workplace hazards means the same risks persist.
Looking West for Potential Strategies
Both California and New York have safe patient handling legislation requiring proper training, equipment, and compliance. What’s interesting is how different facilities across the country have approached meeting these requirements.
Some hospitals, particularly in California, have adopted dedicated mobility teams or lift teams as part of their safe patient handling programs. These specialized teams focus specifically on patient mobility and repositioning tasks. The concept is to provide trained personnel who can support nursing staff with the most physically demanding aspects of patient care.
No single intervention solves every problem in our complex healthcare system. However, facilities that have implemented well-designed mobility programs often report improvements in specific areas: reduced musculoskeletal injuries among nursing staff, better compliance with patient repositioning protocols, and decreased rates of hospital-acquired pressure injuries.
The model works by adding specialized capacity rather than replacing nursing care. Mobility technicians assist nurses with high-risk lifts and repositioning, allowing nurses to maintain their vital caregiving relationships with patients while getting support for tasks that pose the highest injury risk. When implemented thoughtfully, these programs can help address staffing concerns in mobility-intensive situations and demonstrate institutional commitment to worker safety.
Moving Forward Together
As nursing strikes continue across the country, both hospital administrators and nursing unions are searching for answers. Everyone involved wants the same fundamental outcomes: safe working conditions, adequate staffing, quality patient care, and financial sustainability. The challenge is finding solutions that address multiple concerns simultaneously.
Healthcare facilities exploring comprehensive workforce solutions, including specialized mobility support where appropriate, have an opportunity to address some of the core safety and staffing issues driving current labor tensions. These aren’t magic solutions that resolve every challenge, but they represent practical steps toward creating safer, more sustainable healthcare environments.
The path forward requires good faith efforts from all parties, a willingness to learn from what’s working in different regions, and recognition that protecting healthcare workers and delivering quality patient care aren’t competing priorities. They’re inseparable parts of the same goal.
Eric L. Race
Eric L. Race is the Founder and CEO of Atlas Mobility, a Bay Area-based healthcare technology company advancing safe patient handling and mobility across hospitals nationwide. A former firefighter and paramedic, Eric brings a safety-first mindset to healthcare innovation. He is a member of several national safety and mobility councils, including collaborations with the National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel and the American Nurses Association.
