Safe Nurse Staffing for Patient Safety & Quality Care Act

Published

Please send a letter to your Congressman about enacting the bill about having mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios by going here:

http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/page/speakout/national-ratios

You can look more into what the proposed RN ratios will be and more here:

http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/issues/entry/ratios

We need your help to make this bill a reality. Send this to everyone you know.

Might as well try to send a letter to Congress... and share this with every single person you know.

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Specializes in Pediatrics, Emergency, Trauma.
Texas has had a law several years now that requires nursing staff to participate in a safe staffing committee where ratios and other issues can be discussed and then presented to the Board of Directors/Administration. HR and the CNO sit on the committee. The law does not promote ratios, because nurses fought to have it more flexible as one patient can be too many sometimes. The idea is to have staffing mixes match patient need. I believe this system has good intent, but wonder if the follow-thru is effective, as we cannot change budgets and that is what drives staffing availibility.

My state has a law similar that is being proposed in my state; the SNA has a upcoming legislative day next month.

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Specializes in Med/Surg/ICU/Stepdown.

If hospitals were smart, they would begin strategizing now for how to make those numbers a reality instead of waiting for a mandate to drop.

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Texas has had a law several years now that requires nursing staff to participate in a safe staffing committee where ratios and other issues can be discussed and then presented to the Board of Directors/Administration. HR and the CNO sit on the committee. The law does not promote ratios, because nurses fought to have it more flexible as one patient can be too many sometimes. The idea is to have staffing mixes match patient need. I believe this system has good intent, but wonder if the follow-thru is effective, as we cannot change budgets and that is what drives staffing availibility.

Fighting for "flexibility" was stupid. Because there is ALWAYS the flexibility to staff better, but when we fight ratios because we want "flexibility" all we end up doing is giving administrators the flexibility to continue to staff unsafely. Nurses have a "voice"??? Well la-di-da. Doesn't mean it's listened to.

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Specializes in Pediatrics, Emergency, Trauma.
Fighting for "flexibility" was stupid. Because there is ALWAYS the flexibility to staff better, but when we fight ratios because we want "flexibility" all we end up doing is giving administrators the flexibility to continue to staff unsafely. Nurses have a "voice"??? Well la-di-da. Doesn't mean it's listened to.

This. :yes:

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Specializes in Pediatrics, Emergency, Trauma.
Texas has had a law several years now that requires nursing staff to participate in a safe staffing committee where ratios and other issues can be discussed and then presented to the Board of Directors/Administration. HR and the CNO sit on the committee. The law does not promote ratios, because nurses fought to have it more flexible as one patient can be too many sometimes. The idea is to have staffing mixes match patient need. I believe this system has good intent, but wonder if the follow-thru is effective, as we cannot change budgets and that is what drives staffing availibility.

To add: the "flexibility" to staff better would be in the best interest by having no wiggle room to staff better, but effective; if that makes sense; being, that set ratios will not even give the loophole to not staff at all.

I think skill mix would still be effective with ratios, as well.

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Specializes in Trauma Surgical ICU.

Done.. I hope to see this in my lifetime. Sadly I know of step-down units that have up to 6 pts and are required to document like the ICU, ICU's that are tripled with CRRT pts. This has to change !!!

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PACU.

Our nursery nurses would lay down and die if they had 6 patients! We all get a fair share of drug withdrawal kids and they would all end up with us in NICU if you have a 2:1 ratio in there! 2:1 is fine if you have a vent kid and another stable feeder , but it would never fly for us to each have 2 kids while they had 6! There has to be another sub part to this for acuity. Right now we have a staffing chart that tells us when census=this then you staff with X. But if acuity is very low we might not need X and only staff with Y even though the chart says X.

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I guess I'm lucky that in our ICU the ratio is 1:2 unless the patient is CRRT then it's 1:1 balloon pumps 1:1 and ECMO 2:1 hope the other hospitals follow. PCU 1:3 with a PCT.

Sent from my iPad using allnurses.com

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Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.

I work PCU. We have 36 beds. Over the weekend we had five patients each, two techs, only six nurses on the floor and several empty beds (ie: potential admissions). It is the closest I have ever come to calling Safe Harbor.

Fed. Up.

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Specializes in Geriatrics, Home Health.

Why does this bill not include ratios for SNFs and LTC?

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Specializes in Pediatrics, Emergency, Trauma.

SNFs are 1:5...look on the table that is a part of the article; the table is in Esme's post.

There are plenty of LTCs that have "skilled beds" and use the loophole as such; this may be a step in the right direction to get the LTCs at their own game and utilize safe staffing.

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