Adriana Fuentes

Adriana Fuentes, a dietary clerk at Stony Brook University Medical Center on Long Island, says she made the long bus trip from Suffolk County to the March 15 midtown Manhattan budget demonstration for her patients.

“I’m a healthcare worker, so, of course, I’m concerned about jobs,” she said. “But I’m more concerned about what the cuts would mean for patients.

“I’m an 1199SEIU Delegate because I think working people should be represented and fought for. And I also believe patients need to be cared for in an environment in which there are enough workers and resources. Our motto at Stony Brook is ‘patients first.’”

Fuentes sadly recalls that her late mother did not get adequate care when she was hospitalized in Queens before her death. She says that when she complained, the nurses told her that the institution did not have adequate staff.

 “Every dollar makes a difference,” she said.” I know the consequences of  understaffing. Many of us are cared for in the hospitals where we work. So we’re workers and patients, too”

Marching alongside Fuentes at the March 15 demonstration was S. Frazier Dudley Gaines, a cook with 22 years experience at Stony Brook. “I agree totally with what Adriana says about money for staffing,” Gaines says. “My father was a patient at Stony Brook. Cuts hurt.”

Fuentes says of the rally, which was her first, “I thought it was great, it really energized me.” The next day, when she was unable to get water from a faulty water fountain at work, she started chanting to get it fix just as she had chanted at the rally the day before.

Fuentes has a union-conscious family. Her eldest son and her husband both hold union jobs. She has a 16-year-old who is in high school and three children in college. She acknowledges that three college students put an economic strain on the family.

 “Healthcare workers aren’t rich,” she says. “But the bottom line is still the patients. We put patients first.”