[pickledpepperRN]

Nurse Hoffa

The radical nurse who licked Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking her caring but costly agenda nationwide.

Deborah Burger makes $50 an hour working half-time in picturesque Santa Rosa, Calif. taking care of diabetes patients at a Kaiser Permanente hospital. She has a nurse's warm smile and simple manner, sympathizing with patients who struggle with their diets or medicine. "If a plan of treatment isn't working, I let them take a diabetic vacation. I say, 'That's okay, let's work on something else,'" she says.

Burger is less lenient in her other life, as president of the California Nurses Association....
...Its chief goal is to carve into law a patient-to-nurse ratio of 5-to-1 or less, a feat it achieved in California over the objections of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The ratio varies from state to state and by medical specialty but runs as high as 12-to-1. "We want a nationwide standard of care," says Burger....

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0724/056b.html

[Faeriewand]

She's right. We need a national standard.

[sunnyjohn]

Hee hee!

Hospital chain Universal Health Services (nyse: UHS - news - people ) is avoiding ratio states. "We wouldn't want a pervasive presence in California because of the nurse issue," says Steve G. Filton, Universal's chief financial officer.