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Nurses Take Campaign for Safe Staffing Levels to Capitol Hill |
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The formula too many hospitals use today to establish nurse-to-patient ratios should be called the “whatever-we-can-get-away with” formula, says Suzanne Gordon, nursing professor and co-author of the new book, Safety in Numbers: Nurse to Patient Ratios and the Future of Health Care.
Gordon, along with representatives from four AFL-CIO nursing unions, met in a roundtable discussion with dozens of health care experts from the staffs of Senate and House members to explain the dangerous and sometimes tragic impact of understaffing on patient care that is also a major factor in driving nurses from the profession and the growing nurses shortage.
The roundtable, sponsored by the RNs Working Together, the coalition of 10 AFL-CIO unions representing more than 200,000 registered nurses, is one step in the campaign to build support on Capitol Hill for the first national nurse-to-patient ratio legislation (H.R. 2123) introduced by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).
The bill would establish minimum nurse-to-patient staffing ratios to improve patient safety and quality of care, and to address the nursing shortage that has left our nation’s hospitals critically understaffed. This legislation would give nurses manageable patient loads, which would allow them to provide better care while also avoiding preventable medical errors. The bill would establish safe staffing standards in all hospitals, including hospitals that serve Medicare and Medicaid patients and federally operated hospitals.
Gordon, whose book traces how hospital cost cutting in the 1990s created huge new workloads for nurses and deteriorating patient care, told the group that more than 60 studies have documented that hospital understaffing results in more patient deaths, plus more preventable complications like pneumonia, urinary tract and catheter infections, and medication errors.
Ann Converso, a registered nurse and president of United American Nurses (UAN), noted that the need for safer staffing levels and higher patient care standards were the reasons some 700 Kentucky and West Virginia nurses, members of UAN, waged a three-month strike last fall at the Appalachian Regional Hospital system.
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing (CNA/NNOC) was among the organizations spearheading the fight that won California’s first-in-the-nation law establishing a minimum nurse-to-patient ratio of one-to-five. Deborah Burger, an RN and president of CNN/NNOC, said that before the law was enacted, it was not uncommon to find a single nurse in charge of 8, 10, 12 or more patients on a shift.
When hospitals force nurses to care for so many patients, the outcomes can be deadly. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that for each additional patient over four patients a nurse is assigned to oversee, the risk of death increases by 7 percent; in hospitals with eight patients per nurse, the risk of death increases by 31 percent.
Jan Nygaard, an RN who works in a VA hospital in Minnesota and who is an AFGE vice president, says nurses are dedicated to providing the best care possible and giving the correct medications and dosages.
What you do is try to do the best you can with what you’ve got.
But the unmanageable workload—mandatory overtime, double shifts, canceled days off—caused by nurse understaffing is the main reason behind the exodus of nurses from the profession and the resulting shortage. Some 500,000 RNs in the United States are not practicing their profession, according to a 2007 Business Week article.
Safe staffing levels would bring more nurses back into the field, and in California it already has, says Burger:
It made a difference almost overnight. From the time the bill was signed into law in 1999 to 2007, more than 80,000 nurses were added to the workforce.
Most of those, said Barbara Blake, an RN and state secretary of United Nurses Associations of California/AFSCME (UNAC), are nurses returning to the profession.
The law has made a huge difference for nurses and patients.
When Schakowsky introduced her bill last year, she said:
Nurses are leaving the profession at an alarming rate because they are overworked and hospitals are understaffed. In our hospitals today, there are too few nurses caring for too many patients, a dangerous prescription with disastrous side effects.
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I talked with Joan Moore and she agreed that I could change the words to her song. She said she got the melody from an old Irish folk song “Are you right Michael” or it was “Ennis to Kilkee” by Perch French she does not have the sheet music but I am searching for it. She changed the words in the Folk music Tradition and her words are over twenty years old and the copyright is expired. So here are the new stanzas:
MORE FORCED OVERTIME TONIGHT: HOSPITAL VERSION
THE LIVES OF WE NURSES ARE’NT EASY,
WE WORK THROUGH THE DAY AND THE NIGHT.
ONE EMERGENCY AFTER ANOTHER
THIS KIND OF CARE IS’NT RIGHT.
HOSPITAL WORK IS BAD FOR THE FAMILY,
WE DON’T MAKE IT HOME EVERY NIGHT.
ADMINISTRATORS SAY, “LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT”
WHILE THEIR PROFITS GROW WAY OUT OF SIGHT,
BUT WORST OF ALL I’M TELLING YOU
WE CANT GO HOME WHEN SHIFT IS THROUGH
BECAUSE THERE’S:
CHORUS
MORE FORCED OVERTIME TONIGHT
I HOPE THAT I’LL BE HOME BEFORE IT’S LIGHT
OH MY FAMILY IS A GRIEVIN
AND THEIR EVEN TALKIN LEAVIN,
BUT THERE’S MORE FORCED OVERTIME TONIGHT.
DAY AFTER DAY WITH NO TIME OFF,
BEGINS TO TAKE Its TOLL,
IF YOUR TIRED YOU JUST BETTER BE THERE,
CAUSE THE BOSSES SAY ABSENCE CONTROL.
IT’S CHEAPER TO FORCE US ALL O.T.
WHILE THE JOBLESS CONTINUE TO GROW
AND PATIENTS CONTINUES TO SUFFER
WHILE THE HOSPITAL RAKES IN MORE DOUGH
TWELVE HOUR DAYS OR EVEN MORE
WHAT THE HELL WE LIVIN FOR?
CHORUS
WE CAN’T CONTINUE TO TAKE IT
IT IS TIME TO FIGHT WHERE WE STAND
FORCED OVERTIME IS JUST SLAVERY
LET’S CHANGE THE LAWS OF THE LAND.
THE CHAINS OF OUR SLAVERY ARE WAGES
THERE REASON FOR FORCING IS GREED
WHEN ALL OF THE FAMILY IS WORKING
MORE TIME OFF THE JOBS WHAT WE NEED
LET’S ALL WORK FOR A SHORTER DAY
AND NEVER MORE WELL HAVE TO SAY
CHORUS
PLEASE SEE IF THE NURSES OR SEIU WANT TO USE THIS. THEY CAN E-MAIL ME OR CALL AT 650-355-8102 I do have the melody on a cd. I AM ALWAYS READY TO HELP A SISTER OR BROTHER IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT.
Dave Hurlburt CWA Local 9410
I strongly applaud the work of these nurse unions as they are indeed active in protecting the rights of their members as well as the welfare of their patients!
Unfortunatley another union; SEIU has taken the opposite direction against the interest of it’s members as well as the general public with sweetheart contracts with both hospitals and nursing homes!
As someone who cut his teeth with SEIU some 27 years ago it saddens me to see this happening. It is an insult to the dues pauying members of SEIU as well as the whole labor movement in general!
Legally I do not know what the SEIU constitution and by-laws says in regard to the stripping of SEIU member’s democracy and the complete selling out to the bosses, I do know that SEIU can be decertified by the rank & file and more progressive and democratic unions can come onto the job sites and properly represent the workers as expected.
Once again I applaud UAN, CNA and other legitimate nurse unions for their activity on behalf of their members as well as the patients that they take care of!
Good for the nurses! Here is one story about understaffing and medical mistakes: http://adventuresincardiology.wordpress.com/
or Google “Adventures in Cardiology”