Nurse bill on life watch

wow, this will change........ precisely nothing.

Yes, the info released is always subject to "cleaning up", prior to public knowledge.....

amen to that.

I can see it...well, we had 8 "scheduled" nurses to give us a 1-4 ratio, but we called out 4 of them....so we report the 8 nurses and the 1-4 ratio.

and by the time the supervisor makes rounds, its " where are a,b,c,d" fhe schedule says...

Well, this might be interesting. I think patients should be told up front every day: I am your nurse. Today I have 5 other patients besides you. Here is the phone number to our administrator. His name is_______________. If you need something, give him a call.

In addition, we have a rapid response team in our hospital. If you feel that you are getting sicker and need help now call this number 5911 and they will send help immediately.

That should get someone's attention.

When I used to be the director of the ER in a medium size ER I used to get called for one crisis or another at least three times per week and have to come in during the night. The hospital would have to go on divert because we had no icu beds and the ER was so full that all my shock rooms were full of patients waiting for an ICU bed. Plus we did not come close to having enough staff. People had art lines, swans, were intubated etc. These patients used to wait in the ER for 3 days, waiting on a bed. I used to come in and wait until about 3 or 4 in the morning, just when the CEO was fully into his REM sleep to call him and give him a little "update" on our condition. I only had to do this for about three weeks when all of a sudden nurses showed up and they opened up some overflow beds they could use to get these ICU patients out of the ER. When they could not get them out, they would at least send an ICU nurse to take care of them. Your problems will never be solved until the problem becomes the problem of someone else. And waking them up in the middle of the night is the best way to make it their problem.

Hospitals will just use cutesy words like "health care providers" and lump nurses and aides together. Yes, we have 1 health care provider for every four patients, ummm, well one is an RN and 2 are STNA's for 12 patients. Is that a problem?

I don't really know what to think about this bill. It just seems like the bill would just put more pressure on nurses which would require more paper work.

Frankly, I'm started by the responses to this bill here. What harm could it do? The data are already being collected; sharing it informs consumers and could give poor hospitals a powerful incentive to shape up.