Kathy Santoiemma joined thousands of other New York City registered nurses Thursday, walking picket lines in front of hospitals across the city protesting a workload that they claim threatens patient care.

“It causes a lot of frustration on the part of the nurse but it also causes a lot of problems with the patients — all of the studies show and it’s common sense that if you have fewer patients then you can do a better job with your patients,” said Santoiemma, who works at Montefiore Medical Center, told DOTmed News.

Santoiemma and her fellow registered nurses at times have to care for up to nine patients at once. Her hospital also cut the nursing assistant and unit clerk staffs so those additional responsibilities now fall on the nurses’ shoulders.

Thursday's protest marked a major effort to create awareness about the current nurse staffing crisis at the city’s hospitals, said protestors. As part of an informational picket, the nurses held signs and handed out literature to the community in hopes that they will contact the hospital CEOs and demand safer staffing.

To date, 14 hospitals around the city are affected by this issue and some require the nurses to care for ten or more patients at one time. “As nurses we are patient advocates and every day we strive to give patients optimal care but we are stretched to our limits between all of our patients and they are not given the full attention they deserve,” said Diane Minett, RN at Staten Island's Richmond University Medical Center.

Hospitals don’t want to be told what staffing levels should be, said Tara L. Martin, a spokesperson for the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA). “They want to arbitrarily, from time to time, increase staffing when they want, and decrease staffing when they want — and that’s not safe,” she said.

The NYC Hospital Alliance, a multi-employer bargaining group that consists of The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai St. Luke’s, Mount Sinai Roosevelt, Montefiore Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, is currently in the process of negotiating a collective bargaining agreement between the hospitals and NYSNA to address wages, benefits and management, and union matters.

In response to Thursday's rallies, the alliance said, "NYSNA's insistence on rigid staffing ratios is not the way to improve patient care. Nor is there a shortage of nurses currently, as the hospitals that make up the Alliance have collectively hired 1,000 additional nurses since the last contract was signed. In a changing health care landscape that requires flexibility and a team-based approach, staffing levels and assignments must remain the responsibility of hospital management."

But the NYSNA wants this to be regulated on a state level. “We’re having conversations during contract negotiations from hospital to hospital but there is no standard practice of law or state regulation that requires safe staffing levels in all of our hospitals," said Martin.

Efforts to regulate nurse staff levels have struggled in Albany. The Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act has been in the New York Senate and the New York State Assembly for over 10 years now but there has yet to be an official vote on where they stand with this legislation, said Martin.

In California, on the other hand, progress was made on the issue long ago. That state passed its RN Staffing Ratio Law in 1999, establishing minimum RN-to-patient ratios for hospitals, and the nurses in New York are working tirelessly to bring that law to their state.

Next Tuesday, nurses from all over the state will converge in Albany to lobby in favor of finally moving safe staffing legislation forward. “We’re going to get thousands of nurses into Albany, knocking on legislators’ doors, asking where they stand on safe staffing and calling for votes in the Senate and the Assembly to move this bill,” said Martin.