The Work We Do: Brookdale Medical Center's Registered Nurses

1199SEIU represents over 700 Registered Nurses at Brooklyn’s Brookdale Medical Center and its associated longterm care facility, the Shulman and Schachne Institute.

Brookdale nurses established themselves as among the most stalwart voices for nurses and patients with their successful 1977 organizing drive and strike. The institution remains one of New York City’s busiest safety net hospitals. As they have always done, Brookdale nurses provide compassionate, excellent care for some of the city’s poorest and sickest residents.

1. “I started as a student nurse when they had a summer program for young people and when that ended, I worked as a nurse’s aide; I started on nights on the pediatric floor and eventually went over to the HIV unit in the nursing home,” says pediatric ICU RN Shirlian Jaggon. Jaggon earned her nursing degree at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus while working at Brookdale.

3. Carla Smith has been an RN in Brookdale’s Emergency Department for a little over a year. “You get so much experience working in this hospital,” she says. “Everyone and everything comes through the door of the ED; they may not make it upstairs, but they come in our doors.”

5. When Shulman and Schachne RN Aminata Sesay came to the U.S. from Sierra Leone 17 years ago, she knew she wanted to be a nurse and began volunteering at Brookdale. Today, she’s three classes away from her BSN. “I was raised by my grandmother and grandfather, who taught me about hard work,” she says. “After I have my BSN, I want to go on to my master’s and become a nurse educator or case manager.”

7. Shulman and Schachne Institute LPN George Acquaah studied to be an accountant but decided to move into health care and began working as a nursing home CNA. At press time, he was close to finishing up his studies to become an RN.

2. Nursing runs in the family of Benetta Gipson, Assistant Head Nurse at Brookdale’s Shulman and Schachne Institute. Her late grandmother, Charlotte Lee, was an LPN at Montefiore Hospital. “She instilled in me [the importance of] striving for excellence and making a difference in people’s lives,” says Gipson.

4. Yanira Tajada has been an RN on Brookdale’s Labor and Delivery Unit for three years. She started at the hospital as a medical assistant and eventually pursued nursing through the Union’s Training and Upgrading Fund. “The most satisfying part of this job is helping patients and seeing babies be born. The hardest things are the losses,” she says. “It’s tough getting through the grieving and helping patients through the loss.”

6. Judith Ellis has been a Brookdale RN for 32 years. “I normally work on the Pediatric floor, but I help out [on the Pediatric ICU]. I have always loved children. Sometimes this job is hard, and you must try not to get too emotionally attached, but you have to have empathy for every situation.”

“Sometimes this job is hard, and you must try not to get too emotionally attached, but you have to have empathy for every situation.”

—Judith Ellis, Brookdale RN

- 1199 Magazine: May / June 2019