Thursday, October 1, 2026
Every day, registered nurses at Catholic Health/St. Joseph Hospital, in Bethpage, come to work with one purpose: to care for the people of this community when they need us most.
We are there in the moments when families pray for good news. We’re there when patients are frightened, vulnerable or in pain. We’re there at the bedside during long nights, busy days, emergencies, recoveries and everything in between. Nursing is more than a job to us. It is a calling rooted in compassion, skill, advocacy and service.
Today the nurses of St. Joseph are negotiating a new contract with Catholic Health after working without one since March. We want the Long Island community to understand what we’re asking for and why it matters. We’re not asking for anything extraordinary. We’re asking for safe staffing, fair wages and the ability to continue providing the high-quality care our patients deserve.
Safe staffing isn’t just a workplace issue. It is a patient care issue. When there are enough nurses at the bedside, patients receive closer monitoring, faster responses, better communication and more time with the nurses caring for them. Families feel supported. Nurses can do the careful, attentive work that every patient deserves.
When we’re understaffed, nurses step up and do our best to ensure that our patients are safe, comfortable and cared for. We stay focused on the person in the bed, the family in the waiting room and our responsibility as patient advocates.
Through blizzards, emergencies, holidays and long shifts, nurses still show up. We leave our families at home to care for yours. We do this not because it’s easy, but because we love this profession and because the health and safety of our patients matter deeply to us.
New York state established safe staffing standards in 2021 with the Clinical Staffing Committee Act, which recognized how important nurse staffing is to patient care. Yet nurses at St. Joseph continue to experience understaffing. Our goal is simple: to make sure every patient receives the safest care possible.
Fair wages are also part of keeping experienced nurses at the bedside. Long Island is an expensive place to live and work. Nassau County’s overall cost of living runs nearly 50 percent above the national average, with housing costs more than double, according to data from the Council for Community and Economic Research. Competitive wages help hospitals retain skilled nurses who know their patients, their units and their communities. When experienced nurses stay, patients benefit.
Catholic Health has reported strong revenue in its recent financial filings, including $3.7 billion in total revenue in 2024, up 7 percent from the prior year, and has publicly spoken of investing in facilities and staff. We believe investing in nurses is one of the most meaningful investments a hospital system can make. Nurses are the people at the bedside, holding hands, catching subtle changes, comforting families, educating patients and advocating when something doesn’t seem right.
For more than two decades, nursing has consistently been ranked as the most trusted profession in America. In Gallup’s most recent honesty and ethics poll, 75 percent of Americans rated nurses’ honesty and ethical standards as “very high” or “high,” the 25th consecutive year that nurses have led every other profession measured.
That trust is not automatic. It is earned through years of dedication, compassion, clinical judgment and the quiet, steady work nurses do every day.
St. Joseph nurses are proud to serve Bethpage and Long Island. Many of us live here. We raise our families here. We care for our neighbors, our friends and sometimes even our own loved ones within these hospital walls. Now we are asking our community to stand with us.
Supporting St. Joseph’s nurses means supporting safe patient care. It means supporting the nurses who have continued to show up through understaffing, increasing demands, difficult weather, missed breaks, and some of the most challenging years health care workers have ever faced. We remain committed to our patients, our hospital, and our community. We are simply asking for a fair contract that reflects that same commitment back to us.
Daniel Mills is a registered staff nurse at St. Joseph and the vice president of the New York State Nurses Association.
