How does inadequate staffing relate to patient safety? Any stories?

Cushing's Triad was the ONLY knowledge-based question on my NCLEX-RN. Tell's me it's VERY important to know!

It seems to me that it was covered in our unit-based orientation too, but she couldn't put the pieces the patient was displaying - bradycardia + hypertension + apnea = very bad scene - together and come up with it. Our orientation is rushed, it's shallow and the hands-on experience they get is inappropriate. The assignments are not made based on what the new nurse needs to learn but on what the unit needs from the preceptor. If I, as one of our most senior nurses and perhaps the only one on for a given shift, had an orientee and there was a crashing kid onthe unit, that would be my assignment and the orienee would spend the shift observing. But by the same token, if we hired a very experienced nurse from a PICU in a hospital in another city, that new nurse would be treated like s/he was green as grass and not advanced as quickly as s/he deserves, because they have to go by seniority! It's dumb.