Establishes the Safe Staffing for Hospital Care Act. Creates minimum staffing standards, requires staffing plans and recordkeeping, addresses compliance, limits mandatory overtime, and creates employee rights and enforcement language.

This is the big one. Staffing committees are important, but enforceable minimum standards are a different level of protection. This bill directly connects staffing to patient safety, nurse safety, workload, overtime, and the ability to refuse unsafe assignments in good faith.

• Does it move out of Health Committee?
• Are there hearings?
• Are more sponsors added?
• Does the Assembly or Senate version advance first?
• Are hospitals or healthcare associations opposing it?

• Contact your NYS Senator and Assemblymember.
• Share safe staffing stories without PHI.
• Explain how missed breaks, unsafe assignments, floating, boarding, and lack of support staff affect patient care.
• Ask elected officials to support enforceable staffing standards.
• Document staffing concerns through the Safe Staffing Report and POA Intake for Delegate Follow-Up when appropriate.

• S4003 (NY Senate) ↗
• A7095 (NY Assembly) ↗

Expands clinical staffing committee requirements to certain state-operated healthcare facilities that require registered nurses or licensed practical nurses to be present.

Even though NYP Lower Manhattan is not a state-operated facility, this bill matters because it shows that staffing committees and frontline input are becoming a wider statewide standard. It reinforces the idea that staffing decisions should not be made without the nurses doing the work.

• Whether the bill advances out of Health Committee.
• Whether similar language influences future hospital staffing legislation.
• Whether frontline staff participation, paid committee time, and staffing variation reporting remain protected.

• Support the principle that staffing decisions need frontline nurse input.
• Use our own Clinical Staffing Committee process seriously.
• Report staffing variations when actual staffing does not match the grid.
• Encourage coworkers to understand how staffing plans are created and challenged.

• S8083A (NY Senate) ↗
• A8623A (NY Assembly) ↗

Allows certain healthcare workers who are victims of assault to provide their police statement at the workplace where the crime occurred, instead of having to go to a police department, when the workplace is a hospital, emergency medical facility, nursing home, or residential healthcare facility.

Workplace violence is underreported. If reporting requires a nurse to leave work exhausted after a shift and go to a precinct, fewer people report. Making reporting easier matters, especially for ED nurses and any nurse facing violence or threats at work.

• Whether hospital policy reflects this right.
• Whether security, supervisors, and local law enforcement understand the process.
• Whether nurses are actually being supported after assaults.
• Whether reporting barriers remain.

• Report workplace violence through the appropriate hospital process.
• Tell a delegate when barriers to reporting occur.
• Track patterns: location, time, staffing level, security response, and follow-up.
• Do not include patient identifiers in public reports or newsletter submissions.

• S4906A (NY Senate) ↗
• A6055 (NY Assembly) ↗

Amends Penal Law §120.05 relating to assaults on medical providers and hospital personnel. Expands second-degree assault language to include physicians, nurses, nursing professionals, hospital employees, attendants, agents, and volunteers performing assigned duties.

Violence against healthcare workers is not “part of the job.” Stronger legal protections can help reinforce that hospital violence is a workplace safety issue, not an acceptable occupational hazard.

• Whether the bill moves out of Codes Committee.
• Whether an Assembly companion advances.
• Whether the final language clearly protects bedside nurses and hospital staff outside only narrow locations.
• Whether hospitals improve prevention, not just after-the-fact reporting.

• Share de-identified workplace violence experiences with legislators.
• Push for prevention: staffing, security, environmental safety, reporting, follow-up, and trauma support.
• Use internal reporting systems and notify delegates when violence or threats occur.
• Avoid patient identifiers or clinical details in public advocacy.

• S6662 (NY Senate) ↗

Adopts the Interstate Nurse Licensure Compact and Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Compact in New York.

This one is complicated. Supporters see mobility, flexibility, and easier multistate practice. Unions and bedside nurses may want to ask how compact licensure could affect staffing practices, wages, accountability, discipline, orientation, local workforce standards, and employer reliance on out-of-state labor.

• Whether the bill moves in Higher Education.
• Whether labor organizations support, oppose, or seek amendments.
• How patient safety, discipline tracking, scope, and local accountability are handled.
• Whether employers use compact licensure as a staffing shortcut instead of improving retention.

• Ask: who benefits, and how does this affect bedside staffing?
• Follow union guidance before taking a position.
• Push for patient safety, orientation, accountability, and labor protections.
• Keep the discussion balanced; this is not automatically good or bad without details.

• A4524 (NY Assembly) ↗
• S3916 (NY Senate) ↗

Creates statewide nursing recruitment incentive and retention pilot initiatives and establishes a nursing recruitment incentive and retention account.

Retention is not solved by calling nurses heroes. Retention is solved by making the job sustainable: safe staffing, reasonable workload, fair pay, support staff, breaks, security, education, and respect for clinical judgment.

• Whether the bill moves out of Labor Committee.
• Whether funding is attached.
• Whether initiatives focus on retention, not just recruitment.
• Whether bedside nurses are included in designing solutions.

• Tell legislators retention is a working-conditions issue.
• Connect burnout to staffing, breaks, violence, floating, and support-staff shortages.
• Push for solutions that keep experienced nurses at the bedside.
• Share stories without PHI.

• S6525 (NY Senate) ↗

New York requires general hospitals to maintain clinical staffing committees and annual clinical staffing plans. Staffing plans must include specific staffing for each patient care unit and shift, including ratios, grids, or matrices. Frontline staff or their collective bargaining representative may report staffing variations when actual staffing does not match the adopted plan.

This is the law behind staffing grids and Clinical Staffing Committee work. It matters only if nurses know the grid, document variations, and raise concerns through the process.

• Annual staffing plan work.
• Unit staffing grids.
• Whether actual staffing matches the adopted plan.
• Whether complaints and variations are tracked and addressed.
• Whether break coverage, acuity, support staff, admissions, discharges, transfers, and safety concerns are reflected.

• Know your unit grid.
• File the Safe Staffing Report when staffing does not match the grid or conditions feel unsafe.
• Tell your delegate about repeated patterns.
• Keep reports factual and de-identified.
• Do not include PHI, screenshots, room numbers, or patient identifiers.

• PHL §2805-t (NY Senate Laws) ↗
• NYSDOH staffing program ↗

New York restricts healthcare employers from requiring RNs and LPNs to work beyond their regularly scheduled hours except under limited circumstances, including healthcare disasters, declared emergencies, unforeseen emergencies necessary for safe patient care, or ongoing medical/surgical procedures where the nurse's continued presence is needed.

“We're short” is not automatically a legal excuse for mandation. Routine staffing problems are supposed to be planned for.

• Whether mandation is being used as a routine staffing tool.
• Whether the employer has a Nurse Coverage Plan.
• Whether exceptions are being used properly.
• Whether nurses are pressured to waive rights.

• Ask what coverage efforts were made.
• Document the situation.
• Contact a delegate if mandation appears routine or questionable.
• Consider NYSDOL complaint options when appropriate.
• Do not refuse direct orders without first getting union guidance when time allows.

• Labor Law §167 (NY Senate Laws) ↗
• NYSDOL mandatory overtime ↗