California’s Nurse-Patient Ratio Law Saves Lives, Reduces Nursing Shortage

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/01/13/californias-nurse-patient-ratio-law-saves-lives-reduces-nursing-shortage/

Zenei Cortez, a registered nurse in California and member of the Council of Presidents of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, describes how her union helped in the battle to win safe staffing. (The full version appears in the California Progress Report). United Nurses Association of California/AFSCME (UNAC/AFSCME) was part of that campaign, and as the union’s state secretary, Barbara Blake, RN, notes:

Every day, our members tell us about the difference these safer ratios are making in their patients’ lives. They clearly see the link between their political activism in 1998 and the improved quality of care they can deliver in 2008. This is a crystal-clear example of how vital nurses unions such as UNAC are in improving the lives of our patients and our communities.



Here’s a reason to celebrate the New Year—safer staffing in California hospitals, once again. As of Jan. 1, California’s historic staffing law for registered nurse staffing ratios, achieved through years of advocacy by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), completes its phase-in period.

Over the five-year course of their phase-in, these ratios have revolutionized hospital care and improved patient safety by mandating hospitals maintain minimum, specific nurse-to-patient staffing ratios for all hospital units at all times.

Ratios differ by hospital area, such as a minimum of no less than one RN for every five patients in general medical or post-surgical care units, 1-to-4 in pediatrics and 1-to-4 in emergency rooms. The ratios are a floor, not a ceiling, with hospitals also required to increase registered nurse staffing as needed based on individual patient illness or acuity.

Under our new ratio law, lives are being saved, our ability to be effective advocates for our patients is stronger and more RNs are entering the workforce and staying at the bedside longer, mitigating the nursing shortage.

Since the law was signed, 80,000 more licensed RNs have come into the state’s workforce. In contrast with the years before the law was signed in 1999, more RNs were entering the state than leaving, and more were staying at the bedside.

FULL story at link.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. That is excellent news!

I wondered how it was working, and if it was really being implemented...

The hospitals are a lot like the auto industry:

Every time you want to make things better, they howl and scream that it's impossible, and way too costly!

One concern I did have was how they were actually going to implement the law. There is a nursing shortage here, and I didn't see how they were going to get around that.

I know UCLA is reopening their BSN program, and perhaps other schools are restarting their programs too.

Or else the states (and countries) with lots of RN's are supplying us...


K&R