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To watch a video of the protests, click .

NEW YORK CITY -- Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare workers at Bellevue Hospital here took a knee outside the facility Thursday to honor George Floyd and other victims of police brutality.

More than 100 employees gathered, sharing a "moment" of silence that lasted nearly nine minutes, the same amount of time that Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck before killing him. The protest at Bellevue, part of the NYC Health + Hospitals network, was one of six protests staged by residents at hospitals across the city throughout the afternoon.

"With our stethoscopes and white coats, we promised to do no harm and we must find the voice within us to break the silence like we are doing today," said Kamini Doobay, MD, an emergency medicine resident at NYU Langone Health and Bellevue Hospital, who spoke at the protest. "Not doing is doing when you see injustice and turn away, and that is why we are here to stand with black lives."

Ravi J. Shah, MD, an internal medicine resident at NYU Langone Health who attended the Bellevue protest, highlighted the disproportionate rate at which COVID-19 is killing black Americans, and how systematic racism contributes to this disparity by putting black Americans at an increased risk for diseases of poverty, segregated healthcare, and inequitable access to education and housing.

"These are public health issues that healthcare providers should be intimately involved in helping to address," Shah told 番茄社区.

Protesters chanted "no justice, no peace," "black lives matter," and "I can't breathe."

"I can't breathe," the three last words spoken by Floyd before he lost consciousness, are words that physicians and healthcare workers who attended the protest hear every day, especially in the COVID-19 era, said Zach Reilly, MD, an internal medicine resident at Bellevue who also attended the protest.

"We've seen so many patients complaining when they come into the emergency room saying they can't breathe," Reilly told 番茄社区. "So knowing George Floyd was experiencing the same thing ... it really hits close to home."

Doobay said many patients, including members of her own family in the Caribbean community in Queens, have not made it to the hospital to get treated for COVID-19 in the first place. Others have been turned away because they could not afford care.

"During this pandemic, we've intubated young and old patients, and patients have come in on the brink of death and left our hospital alive and well," Doobay said. "However, those are the patients that made it to our doors."

Homelessness, substance use disorders, and mental health crises are commonly encountered by police, Doobay said. However, without properly training officers or establishing better relationships between the police force and public health administration, black Americans will continue to be , Doobay said.

"We hope not just to save black lives, but to save humanity by valuing black lives," Doobay said. "Black people can no longer be denied basic human rights."

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