North Country nurses to highlight healthcare challenges

PLATTSBURGH | NYSNA healthcare professionals across the North Country will convene at a community town hall meeting Tuesday to discuss the region's growing crisis over inadequate staffing and the loss of healthcare services. The town hall meeting featuring healthcare professionals, nurses, labor organizers and community members will be held at Hampton Inn & Suites on Route 3 in Plattsburgh at 6 p.m. to discuss ongoing issues and long-term solutions. Join NYSNA nurses, healthcare professionals, labor organizers and community members to learn more about the healthcare issues at stake and discuss long-term solutions. Organizers said as large healthcare systems take over local hospitals, they often cut essential healthcare services. In the North Country, the University of Vermont Health Network has acquired Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital (CVPH), Elizabethtown Community Hospital and Alice Hyde Medical Center. Since then, they have eliminated vital departments, such as intensive care units and maternity wards and consolidated services to the detriment of patient care, according to NYSNA. The region is already dealing with a lack of access to pediatric care and mental health beds. Between 2000-2022, the region lost roughly 15.8 percent of its certified maternity beds. Fewer maternity beds means longer travel times and therefore an increased risk of adverse outcomes for pregnant women. People who experience pregnancy in rural areas already face 9 percent higher rates of additional illness or death than people who experience pregnancy in urban areas. Between 2020 and 2022 alone, the North Country region lost 420 nurses (12.4 percent), the biggest percent loss of any region in the state. While community hospitals use expensive travel nurses to cover staff shortages, they have failed to invest in the recruitment and retention of nurses rooted in the North Country community. Chris Swiesz, RN, an ambulatory surgery center and emergency department nurse at CVPH, said "This new normal of understaffing and being asked to do more with less is not sustainable — you just can't do it. Nurses are getting burned out. When hospital administrators say they want to streamline, they really mean strip us of resources. We are already the only hospital for the community and our patients deserve better." Vicki Davis-Courson, RN, a nurse for nearly 20 years at CVPH, said "Nurses get into this profession because we care. It's not that we don't want to stay—it's that we're not being empowered. UVM is not giving us the staffing that we need to provide the best care possible. That's why young nurses keep leaving."

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North Country nurses to highlight healthcare challenges

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