Parents seek answers after child’s death at Mount Sinai during New York nurses’ strike

When striking nurses picketed outside Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan on Jan. 11, the parents of 4-month-old Noah Morton say they were at their sick child’s bedside with little awareness of the work stoppage.

Craige Morton and his wife Saran say they had good reason to believe their son, who spent his entire short life in the neonatal intensive care unit with heart disease, was improving or at least stabilized.

Late that evening, the parents say they received a call from Mount Sinai staff saying that Noah’s heart had stopped.

“It seemed so sudden,” his father Craige said.

Noah’s mother, Sarah, said she was surprised, adding, “Basically, they just said he looked pale.”

The parents say they were told at the hospital that their son had died while they were trying to insert a catheter to give him blood.

Now, three weeks after Noah’s death, Craige and Saran Morton say they are surprised again – this time to learn that Mount Sinai is conducting an internal review of how the hospital is handling their son’s care that day.

The mother says they want to know if the strike or other factors played a role.

A hospital spokesman says all deaths in intensive care units are reviewed regularly. But an internal message viewed by the I-Team appears to suggest that hospital management decided to take a closer look at the case after concerns were initially raised about Noah’s care.

One hospital insider familiar with the case said that, as with most ICU deaths, several factors led to this baby’s death, but greater willingness to strike may have given the 4-month-old baby a better chance of survival. The source declined to describe any specific culprit behind his death, but said the hospital, which was overcrowded, missed opportunities to report subtle warning signs of his deteriorating condition earlier.

“Essentially they tied one hand behind our backs,” a hospital insider said. “Senior leaders have put all these providers, doctors, nurses, people caring for these babies into a no-win situation.”

Hospital management warned from the outset that the nurses’ strike could be dangerous, especially for debilitated patients in the intensive care unit who require intensive specialized care. Sinai moved some of the babies to other facilities to ease the workload in anticipation of the strike, but dozens of babies remain, some of whom insiders say are “too sick to move.”

The Sinai spokesman says the ICU was fully staffed at the time of the strike with a constant 1 to 1 ratio of nurses to newborns, adding that all replacement nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit during the strike were trained in neonatal intensive care.

But two insiders at the hospital told the I-Team that some of the replacement nurses had no experience in the intensive care unit.

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Insiders blame not the new staff or unionized nurses, but rather the failure to hire more – and more experienced – temporary workers and keep them in place until a strike that has been brewing for weeks.

“Higher-level management puts a lot of emphasis on profits, not on patients and their employees,” they said. “And the result for this child was a devastating consequence of that mentality.”

During a three-day hiatus, medical staff at the hospital and demonstrators outside shared messages on social media suggesting some medical services had become more stressful or chaotic, describing “unfortunate cases.”

One source said the baby was accidentally given the wrong breast milk.

Mount Sinai insisted that the preparations for the strike were sufficient, even when one nurse posted on social media that she quit after a day because the patient burden was too great.

On the third day of the strike, just hours before Noah’s death, progress at the negotiating table seemed out of reach. The Sinai nurses were looking for a better deal, including better staffing ratios. At 6:00 pm on the same day, Sinai management sent an email reviewed by the I-Team, which appeared to follow the hospital administration’s negotiating position.

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“We want this strike to end, but we cannot afford to offer more than is fair,” the statement said. “Meanwhile, operations are becoming more stable. Hundreds of additional nurses are arriving, navigating today and tomorrow.”

Hours later, Noah’s family reports that they received a call telling them that he had died. And a few hours later, a deal was reached.

“There was no indication that they were planning to settle the dispute,” one insider said. “Many people in the hospital can’t help but wonder if this agreement hastened it.”

A Mount Sinai spokesman said the child in question was a very sick patient from birth and the timing of his death did not affect the decision to agree to a deal with the striking nurses. The hospital also noted that a similar labor deal was made with nurses at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx at the same time on Jan. 11, the day Noah died.

Noah’s parents said their son was born with a hole in his heart and spent his entire short life in intensive care at Mount Sinai while doctors tried to improve his breathing ability in preparation for surgery to close the hole. They told the I-Team that they believed their child received compassionate care from both permanent and temporary employees.

Mount Sinai did not say whether the internal investigation into the child’s death would include an overview of how the nurses’ strike may or may not have affected his departure. A spokesman said the hospital is not commenting on internal investigations, at least until they are completed.

While they wait for the details of the hospital inspection, the parents struggle financially to bury their child properly. They started a GoFundMe page in hopes of raising money for a funeral they weren’t mentally ready for yet.

“I thought he was getting better,” said the child’s mother. We didn’t know there was an investigation going on.”