SLEEPY HOLLOW, N.Y. (AP) -- The entire staff at a poison control center resigned Friday in support of its fired director, forcing another center to handle about 80 extra daily calls, from swallowed detergent to venomous snakebites.
A new staff was being hired for the Hudson Valley Poison Center, which handles emergencies for 3.6 million residents between the New York City line and the Canadian border.
In the meantime, calls will be transferred to a center in Syracuse in western New York, said Keith Stefan, president of Phelps Memorial Hospital Center, where the Hudson Valley center is based.
The center's two dozen nurses and pharmacists decided to quit last month after the administrative director, Patricia Purello, was fired for not completing a grant project.
Purello, who has worked at the poison center for 17 years, says the project had never been assigned to her. She is protesting the termination through the hospital's grievance process.
Phelps Memorial Hospital is reimbursed by the state for operating the center, one of 70 poison control centers in the country.
