Nurse Staffing Ratios - Going before Massachusetts voters in November

[tnbutterfly - Mary, BSN]

The Patient Safety Act will go before Massachusetts voters on November 6, mandating safer nurse-patient ratios. A hospital-backed group, the Coalition to Protect Patient Safety attempted to challenge the vote, however, the challenge was rejected by the Supreme Judicial Court.

The Patient Safety Act is a proposed law drafted by the Committee to Ensure Safe Patient Care, a coalition made up of advocates across Massachusetts, including registered nurses, patients and family members, health and safety organizations, community groups, unions, and elected officials. The Massachusetts Nurses Association also supports the initiative. For years, nurses have pushed staffing requirement legislation, but their proposals have failed to gain traction in the legislature.

For details on the proposed ratios per type of unit and level of care, go to Save Patient Limits.

[BedsideNurse]

Here's the "what planet are you on" non endorsement of nurse patient ratios by the MA ANA:

"This is the wrong path for Massachusetts, for patients and for nurses," said Diane Hanley, President of the ANA Massachusetts Board of Directors. "This proposal undermines the flexibility and decision-making authority of nurses and puts rigid mandates above patient safety, clinical nurse input, nurse manager's discretion, and every other consideration in a hospital."

HELLO: we don't have decision making-authority when it comes to patient assignments, or even much, if any, flexibility, hence the need for ratios. Mandates are all about patient safety, and nurses at the bedside nurse know this. What a bunch of nonsense.

Anyhow, I looked over Save Patient Limits and it looks really good to me--although, isn't PACU 1:1 now? Also, whatever ratio laws are passed they need to be written in a way that ensures hospitals won't be able to undermine ratios with bogus acuity tools. We almost always have 2 patients, and often have 3, yet our acuity ratios for ICU consistently show the nurse patient average to be 1.2-1.4 patients per nurse (whatever that means, right?). The ICU nurse patient ratio law in MA has been made meaningless by hospital work arounds. It's extremely disappointing and is certainly detrimental to the care of the patients.