Nurses of Local 97 Nova Scotia Union, say that mandatory ratios are necessary

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

Too often the nurses are understaffed, putting patients' health and even lives at risk.Capital Health, their employer, argues that mandatory ratios are too costly to implement and not effective....

... Kathleen MacMillan, Director of the Dalhousie School of Nursing, points to California to support the argument that mandatory ratios are a bad idea.

"Experiments with fixed nurse-patient ratios in other jurisdictions (.e.g. California), which were initially hailed as solutions, have largely been policy failures and have been abandoned," writes MacMillan inThe Chronicle Herald.

Malinda Markowitz is a Co-President of the California Nurses Association (CNA). She also still works as a nurse in a California hospital. Her union was instrumental in getting legislation passed that establishes mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios in California.

Markowitz doesn't think at all that in California legislated nurse-patient ratios were a failure.

And that mandatory ratios were abandoned is news to her.

"That's totally absurd and ridiculous," says Markowitz. "First of all, it was never an experiment. It was a very thorough look at what was happening in the hospitals and to the patients. And it has not been abandoned by any means in California."

"I have been a nurse since 1980," says Markowitz. "I have been working for many years on med-surg, first without having ratios, and then after we had the ratios. What patients tell us is that since the change patient care has improved tremendously."

Quality of patient care was central in the California nurses' argument. Much as it is in Nova Scotia....

http://halifax.mediacoop.ca/story/california-nurses-have-no-regrets-about-mandatory/22236

[Chisca, RN]

Somehow California hospitals continue to operate at a profit despite having to meet state staffing laws so maybe it is a question of replacing the current management. Do the board of directors know how incompentent their current management is?

Embattled HCA reaps strong profits from California hospitals - Los Angeles Times