Yes on 1! Yes on Ratios!

[DannyBoy8, RN]

Election day is near. If you're available to volunteer by holding a sign at a polling place on election day see link below. The hospital industry has spent over $20 million dollars to mislead voters by overstating the cost of nurse ratios and by using lazy nurse managers/administrators/executives to spread false information.

Vote yes on 1!

Election Day Volunteer - Safe Patient Limits SAVE LIVES

[AnnieOaklyRN, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

Vote NO on question 1!

Vote NO on question 1!

Now that the vote is over, I am genuinely curious why some/good portion of nurses were against this. I have just never seen a compelling argument against other than the timeline.

[DannyBoy8, RN]

Many of nurses who opposed this proposition were in some level of the management hierarchy. It also seemed like nurses who work in settings that would not have been covered by the proposition were quite bitter about that fact (LTC, nursing homes, etc.) News flash for them, now that won't ever happen. Then there were some nurses who were intimidated by their management and c-suite....scare tactics work, sadly. Naturally, some folks were opposed on political grounds.

I think there are some good arguments against ratios, but those arguments don't outweigh the benefits.

Interestingly, the yes:no ratio almost directly matches the support:opposition expenditure ratio.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

Now that the vote is over, I am genuinely curious why some/good portion of nurses were against this. I have just never seen a compelling argument against other than the timeline.

My impression, based on things I saw my former colleagues post, is that they were successfully scared by their employers into thinking that units would close or that (in pediatrics, for example) everyone would have 4 patients at all times and that there was no flexibility for patients who were more acute. Of course, the law just created a maximum number of patients that could be assigned to 1 nurse, it in no way said "you cannot only assign this nurse 2 patients because she has a kid who is crumping".

I am speaking only of the people I worked with in the hospital here but I wouldn't exactly call the group of nurses I worked with in the hospital to be "informed voters." They all thought we were going to lose our Blue Cross when Obamacare was passed even though Massachusetts already had its own statewide version of the exact same law, for example.