Beyond the Picket Lines: My Years as a Strike Nurse

My original state of licensure was New York. I went to college there and took the NCLEX in New York. I worked at Highland Hospital in Rochester as a patient care technician — basically a glorified CNA — between my first and second year. When I graduated in May of '93, I started as a GN (graduate nurse) at the same hospital, then took the boards in June.

I was part of the beta group for the first computerized NCLEX. My coworkers were furious when I told them I was in and out in 42 minutes — sitting under an AC vent, no less. The rumor was that if it shut off early, it meant you failed. That scared me. But I passed. We had to wait for results until August so the paper test takers wouldn’t feel cheated.

Less than a year later, I took my first travel assignment to Florida. Coming from New York, I thought Florida healthcare was way behind. I worked hospital, home health, and hospice — even had a retired doctor as a home health patient who told me Florida was at least ten years behind in both equipment and procedures.

Fast forward five years. When I returned to New York, it now seemed behind. Not just in healthcare — Florida had moved ahead in computer tech overall. A couple of years later, I saw strike nurse ads in the paper which looked interesting and different and signed up.

My first strike was in December 1999 in Nyack, NY. One of my coworkers there was from the Deep South and was shocked by how far behind New York was. Her home hospital had bedside charting in '99 — we were still doing paper charting and writing lab slips by hand.

Next up was Worcester, Massachusetts, in spring 2000. The job sucked — hostile non-nursing staff — but the tech was solid. I’ll save the sad story from that one for another time.

Then came Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, CA. I was a med-surg nurse, floated to a step-down ICU. I told them I didn’t know how to read monitors. They said, "Don’t worry, you’ll have help." And I did. That’s one of the best parts of strike nursing — no cliques. Everyone’s seasoned. Everyone’s helpful. Cafeteria tables aren't divided by department.

One of my first patients was a bilateral lung and heart transplant — three days post-op, alert and ambulatory. Easiest shift ever. That was also the first time I got a handwritten thank-you card from a patient’s family.

For the next year or so, I bounced between small hospital strikes and rapid-response gigs — UCSF, UCSD, smaller places. I learned fast: there are always more nurses than they need. Rule #1: no whining, no crying, no complaining. You will get floated. Just go with it.

Years later, with some ER experience, I did a strike in Santa Rosa, CA. We all stayed at the same hotel. At the pre-strike meeting, they asked for a volunteer to do phlebotomy. I raised my hand. I figured, "I start IVs all the time, I got this." I didn’t. Drawing 20–30 labs a day is a different beast. Never underestimate your phlebotomist.

In October 2002, my wife of 20 years passed from cancer. She was 38. We had been running a travel nurse agency — CrisisRN — and doing well, but I didn’t have the heart to keep it going. By December, I took a strike in Hawaii — 4 or 5 hospitals on Oahu. I ended up at Queens Medical Center in the neuro ICU step-down. It was a new environment for me but within my skill set.

At first, I felt out of my element. Lost. Then something clicked and I was all aboard. I did 30 out of 31 shifts. I learned that "island time" is real — everything moves a little slower, in a good way. The hospital was old but functional. I’ll never forget the warped hardwood floor or the vintage 1940s wheelchair that rode better than anything modern.

In 2003 or 2004, I did a short ER stint in Minneapolis. Tech was decent, but the winter warning signs were everywhere — like ambulance garages with automatic doors at both ends. I was there in summer, thankfully. You could walk downtown via above-ground tunnels. Cool city, too cold for me.

I retired in late 2024 and moved back to New York in 2012 after a decade on the West Coast. Since then, I’ve only worked in small hospitals for personal reasons, so I can’t speak for the big ones. But the smaller places? Still behind in tech and ideas. For example, I never touched a heparin drip out West. It was Lovenox and PO anticoags. Here in NY? Still hanging heparin drips — even by request from bigger hospitals receiving our transfers.

New York also has the lowest nurse pay rates I've seen — maybe not worse than Florida, (haven't been in FL since the 90s) but still low. Housing’s cheap outside the cities, but the cost of living isn’t. Arizona probably wins for best pay vs. cost balance. My strategy: live where it’s cheap, work where it pays well.

Love to hear your comments, experiences, or questions below.