One of the world's most famous prisons is facing a crisis. Nurses at the Attica Correctional Facility say their overworked, underpaid, and understaffed. “We need help, we need nurses, we need money, we need help,” said Donna Baker a member of the union that represents the nurses. Baker says the prison has just 17 full-time nurses caring for more than two thousand inmates. Vance Hawley is a nurse at the prison. He says he worked more than 500 hours of mandatory overtime last year. “It's impossible to have a lifestyle of any sort when you plan to go to your kids baseball games, wrestling matches, and the things we all do with all of our children and were; not able to do those things because at three o'clock you find out there’s not another nurse to take your shift and you’re here,” said Hawley. Baker agrees. “Some of these nurses are working three and four mandated shifts a week their families are suffering the community is suffering in the sense that they’re trying to complete the job as bets they can but they’re exhausted,” said Baker. Exhausted because of the 17 nurses working the facility at least ten are from nurse agencies and about seven are employed by the State Department of Corrections. State Assemblyman Dan Burling joined the nurses in their protest. He says it’s indicative of an even bigger problem. “Part of that is because there is a tremendous shortage of nurses in New York State and there are a lot of programs that we have tried to institute in the state assembly and the senate throughout the state to help alleviate that shortage,” said Burling. Baker says she hopes lawmakers in Albany will start to pay attention to this crisis before it gets worse.
