? for California nurses about nurse/patient ratios...

[CareBayer]

I posted this in the California nurses forum but have not received any responses....

What type of floor/unit do you work on and what is your nurse/patient ratio?

Has the mandated nurse to patient ratios increased or decrease the quality of patient care and if so, how?

Just curious!

[CABG patch kid, BSN, RN]

I work on a tele + step-down unit; the tele ratio is 4:1 and the step-down ratio is 3:1 (if you have even 1 step-down your total load will be 3, sometimes you have a mix of tele and stepdown assigned). Day shift has a lot more ancillary staff than nights; on nights we are lucky to very rarely get an aide, but we almost always have a charge that doesn't take a patient assignment and helps with various things. Its hard to say if anything's changed since the ratios went down in Jan. because I've only been working since Feb.! From what I've heard from the vets, they love the ratio and the only complaint is that we could use an aide on nights more often. Overall our unit really works as a team, I don't think we'd be very successful if we were always stabbing each other in the back (as I've heard about in other posts here). I'd say we have a very high quality of pt care in our unit and our pt satisfaction scores are high as well.