05.11.2004

STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

1,000 NURSES CALL ON LEGISLATORS TO MANDATE "SAFE STAFFING" LEVELS

By Michael C. Levenson
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
Michael.Levenson@statehousenews.com

STATE HOUSE, MAY 11, 2004—Chanting "patients deserve a vote" and "safe staffing now," about 1,000 union nurses rallied at the State House Tuesday in support of legislation that would mandate lower nurse-to-patient ratios in Massachusetts hospitals.

The nurses, members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, filled a hallway named for the sacrifices of Civil War nurses with a sea of aqua-blue T-shirts as they listened to speaker after speaker decry the current staffing situation as a crisis that is threatening patient care and demoralizing staff.

"We want everyone in this building to know there is no shortage of nurses. It is poor working conditions that are driving us away and we want this fixed," Karen Higgins, the MNA president, told the crowd packed into Nurses' Hall, which responded with cheers and chants.

"Something has to be done to improve the care and safety for all our patients," Higgins said.

Quincy resident Sandy Eaton, 60, a nurse at Quincy Medical Center since 1978, said he now attends to four or five patients per shift, up from three a decade ago, with fewer support staff.

"It's not only physically draining, it's spiritually draining knowing you can't provide the care patients need," Eaton said.

When he starts his 8 pm to 8 am shift, he said, "I feel like an actor going on stage for the first time. I have butterflies in my stomach."

The legislation would make Massachusetts the second state after California to require mandatory staffing levels. Nurse-to-patient ratios would range from 1:1 for patients under anesthesia and in labor to 1:5 for patients in rehabilitation and transitional care and 1:6 for healthy babies in nurseries.

The bill has languished in the House Ways and Means Committee since being recommended by the Joint Committee on Health Care last November.

Hospital administrators oppose the bill.

Karen Moore, president of Massachusetts Organization of Nurse Executives, which represents 500 nurse managers, said some hospital units in California have been forced to close because they have been unable to meet mandatory staffing levels.

Staffing "should be a clinical judgment, not a legislative one," said Moore, who is vice president of hospital operations at Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield. The bill, she said, "is a one-size-fits-all solution."

Rep. Christine Canavan (D-Brockton), a registered nurse who is the bill's chief sponsor, said she hopes a forthcoming analysis of the legislation's cost will quiet the critics.

The union-commissioned study by Thomas Grannemann, president of the Bradford-based firm Andover Economic Evaluation, is to be delivered to House lawmakers in the next seven to 10 days, Canavan said.

About 100 House lawmakers are cosponsors of the bill, but Canavan said House leaders have assured her only that the bill's costs will be analyzed.

"Plan A is to get it passed this year. Plan B is to keep fighting," she said.

Some nurses and patients say they can't wait.

Provincetown resident Richard Ferri, an HIV patient and registered nurse, told the crowd of his ordeal in three separate hospitals where he said he was forced to administer his own care for lack of adequate staffing.

"It was awful," Ferri said. When he asked his nurses how many patients they were caring for, "they just rolled their eyes and said, 'you don't want to know,'" Ferri said.

"This absolutely has to stop," he said.

State Police estimated the crowd at the rally at 1,000.